American GIs in World War II prisoner of war camps across Germany received escape maps, compasses and files secretly inserted into the game boards of Monopoly sets. Real money for the escapees was slipped into packets of Monopoly play money.

The Nazis lost the war.

In 1959, while the world was transfixed by the ''kitchen debate'' between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev at an American trade exhibit in Moscow, a mysterious visitor stole all six sets of Monopoly brought in for the show.

It took a while, but the Communists lost Russia.

Fidel Castro apparently took note. Monopoly had a strong following in Cuba, but Castro has banned it. He decreed that every set be destroyed.

As the pure embodiment of capitalist accumulation, Monopoly gains another victory over fascism and communism Sunday when the 9th World Monopoly Championship convenes in Berlin, the new capital of reunified Germany.

For the first time ever, national champions from the former communist world will be competing.

The victor in Tuesday`s finals, to be played in tuxedo-like ''Rich Uncle Pennybags,'' the Monopoly Man-wins a cash prize of $15,140, the exact sum of Monopoly money that comes with every set.

Vying for the title will be competitors from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, who never were allowed to enter the contest while the Iron Curtain still defined communism`s hold on European real estate.

The Polish champion, Jacek Szmidt, began playing Monopoly in the shadowy underground of Warsaw youth culture about 10 years ago when a friend smuggled in a board from London.

''In my life, I have never made any kind of business,'' said the 32-year- old journalist. ''This game is good for me.''

Szmidt said his secret for success is ''always having plenty of cash''

and, early in the game, investing in properties more conservatively than other competitors.

Gary Peters, 49, the two-time U.S. grand champion, espouses the opposite view, arguing that victory comes to those who buy up everything in sight.

Peters is a real-life veteran capital accumulator-a vice president of Chicago`s LaSalle National Bank, which bought his Florida investment banking firm and converted it into a division specializing in mortgage-backed securities.

He favors the race car as his Monopoly marker, avoids buying or negotiating for Park Place and Boardwalk (the blue-chip properties) in favor of the oranges (New York Avenue, Tennessee Avenue and St. James Place) and the reds (Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky Avenues).

Mathematical studies prove that players land more often on the oranges and reds than other properties, allowing the owner to collect more rents, he said. The yellows and the greens also are popular, as are the railroads.

For Peters, jail is not too bad a place to be during a Monopoly real estate construction boom.

''Getting a `Go to Jail` card is a pleasure sometimes late in a game,''

he said. ''It means you don`t land on property with real estate and high rents for three turns, while all the others do.''

Peters played a half-dozen Monopoly games in recent weeks to get back in form, but otherwise has not played since the U.S. championship in 1991. Instead, he spends free time organizing Monopoly tournaments for charity, and thus far has raised almost $300,000.

National champions from 28 nations ranging in age from 14 to 49 will vie for the tycoon crown now worn by Ikuo Hyakuta, 44, managing director of a Tokyo planning company.

One of those challengers, Reiner Sietas, the German champion, said differences in languages will not be a barrier to negotiations over property during the game, since translators will be provided.

Sietas, 33, who works in computer sciences, said Monopoly has staved off competition from video games because, ''It is a classic. Computers always win, so those games are not so interesting. There is no communication among players, and the games are always the same.''

Parker Brothers, manufacturer of Monopoly, says 57 years of Monopoly sales-more than 150 millions sets worldwide-is a result of its appeal to the most basic human emotions.

Monopoly ''provides players with the chance to fantasize through the game,'' says the company`s official history, explaining its appeal. ''A 6th grader controls the railroads. A neighbor goes to prison. A wife seizes all of her husband`s assets. A brother drives his sibling into bankruptcy.''