At the outset of American involvement in World War II, the winter months of 1942, the United States was already at a grave impasse. The Pacific fleet had been devastated in the Pearl Harbor attack, and on the East Coast, Nazi U-boats were sinking Allied ships. Twenty-one vessels were sunk in January, another 27 were torpedoed in February, and it was widely suspected that the Axis powers had spies and collaborators up and down the Eastern seaboard.
The clannish Italians who made up the bulk of the fishing industry were well placed to supply information critical to the war effort, but their raging distrust of outsiders, and in some cases, their mixed loyalties to America and Italy, prevented them from doing their patriotic duty.
Enter Charlie “Lucky” Luciano. An original American Mafioso, Lucky was cooling his heels at a prison in a remote corner of New York State, having been sentenced to up to 50 years for promoting prostitution. Naval intelligence pulled some strings behind the scenes, and the mob boss was transferred to another facility close to Albany. With his boyhood pal and criminal mastermind Meyer Lansky acting as go-between, the Navy enlisted Luciano to bring his power to bear on the docks, and the result was one of the great counter-espionage successes of the Allied victory.
Lansky and Luciano twisted the screws on waterfront hoods, and Naval intelligence developed thousands of informants on the Atlantic coast. The Nazi attacks stopped, allowing for the free flow of men and supplies across the ocean and into the European theater. Additionally, American Mafiosi, with their knowledge of the Mediterranean harbors and ports they used for drug smuggling, along with their ties to the Sicilian mob, greatly aided in the Allied invasion of Sicily.
These stories have been out there for a long time, but here, English historian Tim Newark broadens their context to encompass their social and political origins, along with the criminal and military ramifications of these intensive efforts. The Mafia’s collaboration may in fact have helped turn the tide of the war itself.
Newark is not a stylist, and his storytelling is occasionally slowed by his citation of this or that document, but the victory of “Mafia Allies” is the depth the author brings to his subject.
Mafia Allies: The True Story of America’s Secret Alliance with the Mob in World War II
Tim Newark
3 STARS
Zenith Press, $24.95