The Death and Life of the Mafia in Italy

Conservatives and liberals alike yield to florid raving when writing of Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism. In their books and articles and reviews of one another's books, there is usually cheerful agreement on the horrid sinfulness of “Il Duce,” and unconcealed gloating at his overthrow (Winston Churchill rushed in to his dinner party, upon hearing of Mussolini's murder, exclaiming with gratification, “Ah, the bloody beast is dead!”), with an occasional murmur of unhappiness later on from those who realize how close Italy came to becoming, by default, a Stalinist client state.

In recent decades there has been much moaning about the incredibly bad condition of Italy's government since the eclipse of Fascism. At the same time it is conventional to make contemptuous references to any efforts asserting that Mussolini was responsible for anything good or valuable. Few commentators overcome the shams of modern ideological fuzz-sorting, and most Mussolini detractors end up producing a literature which resembles what might have been fished from the wastebaskets of the old US Communist party's Daily Worker.

Murder, Not Execution

The bias in favor of Communist explanations is perhaps best revealed in the established account concerning Mussolini's end. Invariably we read of him being “executed by partisans,” though all should know better. Bushwhackers prowling behind the battle lines and self-appointed political opponents with foreign allegiance exploiting the disorder caused by war are not empowered to “execute” anyone. Mussolini was murdered by Italian Communists operating under Stalinist discipline.[1]

One of the consequences of the destruction of Mussolini and his regime was a prodigious rise in criminal activities in Italy, engineered by traditional organized criminal gangs which returned to their established activities when released from the confines of Mussolini's prisons. Dominating this development was the revivified Mafia, effectively subdued for over a decade before the arrival in 1943-44 of the Anglo-American armies, and suddenly back in business everywhere with the achievement of “liberation.”

Distorted History

For a time, wounded ideologues were offended by the assertion that the Mafia had returned to former power and influence as a consequence of “Allied” policies. They sought to minimize the achievement of Mussolini's police in earlier decades by suggesting that the Mafia had been little disturbed in those days, thus managing to ignore all the substantive and widely available evidence to the contrary. How they explain the sudden prominence of the “Honored Society” immediately upon the scene coincident with the 1943 invasion of Sicily by Mussolini's enemies is substantially an essay in utter awkwardness. All the same, the literature which contradicts this line has been growing continually, and a steady re-adjustment has been taking place, despite repeated efforts to divert attention from the central importance of the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 in making the Mafia a power once more.

If the Mafia came ashore only figuratively in the landing craft and the tanks of the Anglo-American “liberators,” there surely was much direct communication and supporting action between the Allied forces and the remnants of the Mafia in the path of the invasion during the first two weeks or so of the assault on the island.

With the passage of time and the publication of more realistic appraisals, it is ever more evident that this aspect of the story has been gravely exaggerated. What remains obscured is the story of how this all began, an embarrassment to most writers on the subject, who prefer to substitute for facts their ex post facto value judgments in harmony with a generation of liberal fixations.

While the authors of modern accounts of the Mafia are not all inclined to gloss over the vicious homicidal greed of the contemporary “Brotherhood,” a note of plaintive wistfulness creeps into some of their narratives at the point where they deal with the collision between the Mussolini regime and the Mafia in Italy. The arrest and conviction of Mafiosi for hundreds of murders, among thousands of other crimes, becomes a bagatelle and an incidental. In their view, the central fact is the jostling of their “civil rights and liberties.” It is unimportant that this large contingent of the world's most depraved criminals was locked up.

Forgotten Victims

Fascist Italy's police draw not a single word of commendation, but are cast as the villain in their effort to clear Sicily and southern Italy of the most deeply entrenched criminal enterprises in Europe. The real forgotten persons in these quasi-apologies for the Mafia are their noncriminal victims; it is almost impossible to read anything about them. Whatever the mawkish sentimentality aroused in behalf of the gangsters, one can generally be assured that their prey will remain nameless, the multitudes from whom they have robbed and extorted vast sums blithely ignored, and the legion they have slain effectively lost from the record.

The campaign of the Mussolini regime to extirpate the Mafia from Sicily began abruptly, though there is much doubt as to the motivation for it, and many details still evade students of this matter. September 25, 1926, is the date assigned for the formal initiation of the anti-Mafia program by the Encyclopedia of World History, which describes the Mafia as “a loose criminal organization which had dominated Sicilian politics for 50 years.”[2] It was significant that the editors should make direct reference to the relationship between crime and politics; any kind of basic understanding of the former without a solid awareness of the realities of the latter, anywhere in the world, is unlikely.

Mussolini Cracks Down

On important occasions, Italian leader Benito Mussolini spoke to cheering crowds from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

However, September 25, 1926, is just the occasion when a bill was introduced in the Italian Chamber of Deputies for the suppression of the Mafia in Sicily.[3] The drive had actually begun almost five months earlier. On April 30, Mussolini's police had arrested 450 suspected Mafia in raids conducted simultaneously in a dozen cities and towns, fighting what were reported in the American newspapers as “pitched battles.”[4] A New York Times feature article two days later identified the “boss” of the Mafia at that time as one Gaetano Ferrarello.[5] But this account was somewhat premature and innocent in announcing that Sicily was rid of these “bandits” “after 50 years of terror.” Mussolini was quoted as declaring that “the wound of Sicilian criminality” would be “cauterized” “with iron and fire if necessary,” and that his regime would “go to the very root of the matter regardless of anyone's feelings.”[6]

Hundreds Convicted

Italy

In the year that followed, American newspapers gave little notice to this campaign. Doubtless it was a period of intensive investigation and preparation. But on October 22, 1927, the first result of the offensive was announced: a mass trial of Mafiosi began that followed a dragnet which scooped up more than 30 leaders at Termini Imerese.[7] This resulted, on January 11, 1928, in the conviction of 147 persons, seven of whom received life at hard labor, eight receiving sentences of 30 years, and an additional five getting 25 years.[8]

Though later writers conveniently overlooked the reported facts and tried to create the impression that the defendants were the victims of “drumhead” proceedings which trampled on their “civil rights,” these defendants apparently had the opportunity and resources to hire a battery of 60 lawyers to head up their defense. Reporters concluded that the organization had now surely received its “death blow.”[9]

Actually, Mussolini's assault on the Mafia had barely begun. On February 8, a new trial of 341 Mafia suspects began in Palermo,[10] followed by the arrest and trial, also in Palermo, of an additional 379 persons from Agrigento and Caltanisetto.[11] Some 500 police were involved in the latter case, in which the defendants were charged with, among other things, 500 major crimes, including 62 murders.

On March 7, 1928, the court at Termini Imerese convicted 67 more persons for various crimes, and sentenced them to terms of from two to 27 years.[12] Special penal farms were created on the Lipari Islands, off the north coast of Sicily, where these sentences were to be served.[13]

New York Times Applauds Mussolini

From this time on, feature articles on this sensational program crowded into the press of the world, and no newspaper outside Italy exceeded The New York Times in breadth of coverage. A column and a half story on January 16, 1928, trumpeted, “Breaking the backbone of the Mafia is one of Premier Mussolini's great achievements.”[14] A Times editorial the following day praised the police executive responsible for directing this drive, Prefect Cesare Mori of Palermo, a veteran of almost 40 years of service in the Italian police. Said the Times, “Prefect Mori of Palermo, who has broken the back of the Mafia in Sicily, will go down in history as a deliverer and superman.”[15]

The New York Times ultimately ran three commendatory profiles of Mori, probably the most admiring written by the paper's own correspondent, Arnaldo Cortesi, on March 4, 1928,[16] which also included a photograph of Mori and a picture of a group of alleged Mafia on trial, enclosed in a large cage. This tactic, employed a number of times during mass trials, was intended to protect the judge, witnesses and jury from personal attack from one or another of the defendants. Correspondent Cortesi concluded that police working under Prefect Mori had made arrests in 79 of 361 municipalities, totaling 1,086 men belonging to five gangs, and accused, among hundreds of serious crimes, of 357 murders alone. Between May 1926 and the end of March 1928 eleven policemen had been killed and another 350 wounded in what amounted to virtual battles with the Mafia.

Some narratives concerned with the suppression of the Mafia tend to be exclusively concerned with Sicily, and dream up fanciful reasons for this campaign,[17] Actually, it was part of a three-pronged effort to subdue organized crime as well on the island of Sardinia, and in Calabria, the three provinces in the “toe” of the Italian mainland “boot.” A Times survey in early 1928 reported that Italian authorities considered the Sardinian crime rate to be double that of Sicily, with a murder rate of 24 per 100,000 population, as against Sicily's 16. As for Calabria, it was officially considered to have a crime rate higher than either Sicily or Sardinia, and observers were wondering when Mussolini would stretch the anti-crime drive there.[18]

Finding Refuge in America

Some social and political realities of the time during which this anti-Mafia onslaught took place have to be kept in mind, as well as some of the international implications. The swiftness and comprehensiveness of the drive headed by Prefect Mori caused grave disturbances among the Mafiosi, who responded not only in major gun battles with the police but also in flight to the Italian mainland and to the United States. Though the major Sicilian figures in the American branch of the Mafia had arrived well before 1926, as a result of Mussolini's drive the American gangs accumulated a considerable number of lesser hoodlums who found refuge in the United States from Italian police pursuit. The large number of Italians in the United States also made this country a convenient hiding place for this migrating criminal element.

The adoption in 1919 of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting alcoholic beverages had spawned a fantastic increase in opportunities to make a living by breaking the law.[19] Even though criminal gangs had been a part of urban America since the 1860s, the new opportunities presented by supplying the parched American appetite with illegal alcohol, and everything that went with it in the field of legally enjoined pleasures and diversions, gave organized crime a stimulus in the 1920s that could hardly have even been imagined earlier.

With Americans spending $100,000,000 a year abroad on alcohol by 1925,[20] it can be understood that those who decided they should spend such money on hard liquor at home knew what they were doing in developing the massive smuggling system that evolved in the 1923-1933 decade. The Mafia was just one part of the entire “bootlegging” scene, competing with other ethnic gangs of Irish, Jewish and assorted lesser organizations of different ancestry,[21] let alone the immense domestic group of native birth engaged in home manufacture and distribution of high voltage drink.[22]

In any case, the Mussolini effort to stamp out the Mafia contributed to the mobilization of Sicilian gangsters in the US. In a significant way these new arrivals also brought long-standing feuds and competition with them. Law enforcement authorities reported 527 gangster killings in the state of Illinois alone in 1928, part of this sharp rise traceable to the importation of ancient rivalries from Sicily.[23]

Though the criminals fleeing from Sicily did not make recourse to the ploy of claiming to be “political” persecutees, a claim so dear to killers and armed robbery and mayhem artists in the United States 50 years later, they did not shrink from involvement in political affairs if there was gain to be made from it. A number of Mafia “refugees” were known even to return to Italy early in 1927 to build a system to smuggle “anti-fascists” to France.[24]

No Death Penalty for Mafia Crimes

It has been seen that many of the convictions of Mafia in Sicilian courts were for homicide, but that no death sentences were handed down. During the first few years of Fascist rule, Italy had no capital punishment for any offense. This changed in November 1926 following the third assassination attempt on Mussolini in that same year. The regime proposed its reestablishment on November 5, and the Italian Senate approved it 15 days later.[25]

However, the death penalty was severely restricted to a very limited number of offenses: treason, espionage, armed rebellion, and attempts on the life of the head of state by an Italian native.[26] So no death penalty attached to Mafia criminals subsequently convicted of murder, and there were quite a few.

“Lucky” Luciano

A remarkable decrease in crime in Italy and Sicily was reported by early 1929,[27] even as Prefect Mori's offensive bore on. As a consequence of an extended proceeding, 154 members of a Palermo gang were sent to prison on February 28, 1929.[28] Another major trial at Termini Imerese concluded after nine months, with a jury mulling over 7,000 questions. Part of the problem here was a consequence of the voluminous documentation supplied by the prosecution, which involved the vast captured correspondence of the Mafia chief in this case. This material not only demonstrated a serious involvement of Sicilian governmental authorities, but also revealed significant ties with Mafia in the United States. It ended on May 1, 1929, with a verdict of guilty for 150 of the 161 defendants.[29]

In 1930 another major trial took place in Sicily at Sciacca, involving 241 alleged Mafia accused of several hundred crimes, including 43 homicides. The prosecution eventually produced a small mountain of documentary evidence, which filled 69 boxes. Beginning in July 1930,[30] the trial dragged on until June 22, 1931, when it concluded with the conviction of 124 Mafia (the number of the defendants had shrunk from 241 to 178), 15 of the convicted receiving life sentences, and the 109 others receiving a total of 1,200 years in prison. The jury was out four days, and considered a total of 3,000 questions.[31] This Sciacca trial was considered the most sensational of the entire series, with the defendants sitting in three iron-barred cages throughout the court proceedings. It is worth noting that in this case as well, the defendants were hardly poverty-stricken peasants, but were represented by a substantial contingent of what were reputed to be highly paid lawyers.[32]

More US Praise for Anti-Mafia Campaign

Readers in the United States were treated in December 1930 to an eyewitness report on an Italian Mafia trial written by a well-known American magazine publisher, S. S. McClure, who was present at the beginning of a new Palermo trial. In a report that appeared in the New York Times, he mentioned that Prefect Mori had received four gold medals for his work in prosecuting the Mafia since 1926, and that during one recent year there had been 1,750 murders in Palermo alone. The Mori campaign had thus far resulted in roughly 2,000 arrests, and about half as many convictions, with the result, McClure stated, that “Today, in Sicily and Naples, and in all the regions heretofore plagued by the racketeer, there is absolute freedom from any form of extortion.”[33]

By the end of 1931 Mussolini's drive to wipe out the Mafia was entering its final stages. Another big Palermo trial started on November 29 of that year, with the public prosecutor seeking jail sentences for between 165 and 200 of a somewhat larger group of defendants.[34] The trial lasted into Christmas week, and of an eventual 245 persons brought before the court, 141 were convicted on December 29, 1931.[35]

Only one trial drew attention in 1932, but it was another on the scale previously conducted at Sciacca. This one began in the early spring, at Agrigento. It was held in an improvised courtroom in the former monastery of Santo Spirito, with the defendants once more confined in a large barred cage. It concluded on May 2, 1932, with the sentencing of another 244 Mafia members to a total of 1,200 years in prison.[36] Six weeks later a special piece in The New York Times praised Italy as a country among the world's leaders in instituting penal reforms.[37]

Simultaneous with the campaign in Sicily, authorities were carrying out an anti-Mafia drive on the neighboring island of Sardinia as well as on the Italian mainland. On June 22, 1934, an electrifying raid took place on the mainland, largely in the towns of Cadeto, Gallino, Arno and Pellaro, all located on the “sole” of the Italian peninsular “boot.” Some 400 Mafiosi were arrested in this swoop, the majority of whom, it turned out, had fled there from Sicily.[38] They had, as might be expected, returned to traditional “protection rackets,” reported to be very heavy in Reggio Calabria as they had once been in Sicily. At the conclusion of their year-long trial, during which 1,000 witnesses appeared for the prosecution, an unspecified number of the defendants were given long prison terms.

By mid-1935, it may be assumed, the Mafia had been reduced to a thin shadow of its former self. By this time, priorities in Italy had profoundly shifted as Mussolini had begun Italy's quest for big-power status and a prominent position in the Mediterranean, as well as a belated role as an African colonial power. As a result of the growing hostility toward Mussolini and the Italian Fascist state in the English-speaking world, commendation of anything in Italy was no longer fashionable, and most of what was reported in the United States about domestic affairs in Italy concerned matters discreditable to the regime.[39]

The last mention in the New York Times of Italian prosecution of the Mafia prior to the outbreak of World War II was in November 1937. It reported on the arrest of 80 Mafiosi in Trapani and the contiguous areas of mountainous and relatively inaccessible western Sicily, who were subsequently arraigned in Messina.[40] Little background information was provided, other than a mention that the drive was a response to a “revival of Mafia activities.” Nothing appeared subsequently in the Times on the outcome of this newest police move against the Sicilian Mafia.

Wartime Salvation for the Mafia

Since the central theme of this narrative concerns the Mafia in Sicily and Italy, with only incidental reference to various international relationships growing out of it, the history of the Mafia in America is not included here except where the interlocking consequences of their joint existence becomes obvious. Therefore the latter aspect has so far been treated only peripherally.

This changed with the Second World War, which brought the two together to an even greater degree than during the 1920s and 1930s, at least in their connection to international politics. As a consequence of the war, the Mafia became something more than a domestic phenomenon in both Italy and the United States. In Italy, what looked like extinction was turned around by the fortunes of the war, which became the salvation of the Mafia as a force in Italian affairs.

James J. Martin

How this came about requires a summary of Mafia experiences in the United States in the decade between 1933, when Prohibition ended, and the 1943 Anglo-American invasion of Sicily as a phase of World War II. The re-legalization in 1933 of the manufacture, distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages ended the phase of Mafia criminal opulence that resulted from violation of the previous legal prohibition of such enterprises. Undoubtedly things had begun to change in the relationships between the Mafia and the conventional world, and one of the major aspects of this was the steady penetration of legitimate business by Mafia money, influence and management, resulting in a degree of prosaic respectability which has grown steadily ever since.

Labor Union Corruption

Organized crime continued to make the bulk of its money from control of gambling, prostitution and the ever-expanding extortion or “protection” rackets, the latter much aided by the corruption of labor unions. None of this was affected adversely by the end of Prohibition. In fact, one of the new adjustments made by the Mafia was its substantial penetration of the new legitimate businesses supplying Americans with beer, wine and whiskey. Much of the latter two were imported, and the infiltration of the waterfront of the large port cities – originally a minor enterprise of organized crime – became a very large one. Port facilities, some longshoremen's unions, and all other functional aspects ultimately came under Mafia control. The preposterous incidents related to the extension of the war to Italy in the early 1940s came as a result of this situation.

There were two phases in the process whereby the Mafia achieved respectability through “cooperation” with the military and naval intelligence branches of the US war machine after American involvement in the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

One was recruitment by the famous wartime spy agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – ancestor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – and the alleged supply of information about Sicily deemed crucial to the invasion planners prior to this event in July 1943.

The other concerned alleged Mafia cooperation with US naval intelligence in alerting them as to the existence of German and Italian spies on the New York waterfront, and in preventing such enemy espionage from penetrating the dock areas and destroying ships or facilities, or perpetrating related sabotage.

'Operation Underworld'
US Government-Mafia Liaison

It now appears that such fears about enemy spies and saboteurs were assiduously encouraged by American Mafiosi, especially after the big French luxury liner Normandie burned and capsized at its pier in New York harbor in February 1942. The subsequent nervousness of US counterintelligence, and the fear that a series of such calamities might be in the offing led to establishing links with the Mafia, and the creation of something called “Operation Underworld,” a loose liaison between US Naval Counter-Intelligence and various Mafiosi employed on or frequenting the wharves, in the interest of preventing anything else of this kind.

Actually, the Mafia itself may have purposely created the problem by destroying the French liner, as one of the two most notorious Mafia hoodlums in American history, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, charges in his memoir.[41] In any case, Italian or German agents had nothing to do with the calamity. In an exaggerated way, the Mafia had simply expanded its “protection” racket: in return for guarantees that no more such marine disasters would occur, they managed to provide themselves with an entree into the national defense area. The next step would be the groundwork for subsequent promises of extensive information and assistance in the American invasion of Sicily, which also came with a price. But to this day there is a thick shroud of official mystery over “Operation Underworld,” and no government or service spokesmen have come forth to deny the substance of Luciano's allegations.

Wartime Mafia Enterprise

Another mystery is the effect of the Mafia's “cooperation” pose on political decisions within the Roosevelt regime, and whether this collaboration led to official disregard of domestic Mafia lawlessness, particularly its gambling activities and its tireless and expansive evasion of price controls, rationing and other wartime national and local economic restraints. The sums made by the Mafia through corrupting the ration stamp programs for gasoline, clothing and food, and the similar fortunes made providing scarce, forbidden or rationed products, have never been determined. This entire episode was largely papered over by New Deal economists and historians, who sought to sell the public the legend about how honestly and efficiently wartime price control and rationing had worked.[42]

Of a somewhat different nature is the story of US recruitment of the Mafia in preparing for the invasion of Sicily. This involved the actual placement of hoodlums in US intelligence services, and related soliciting of information from others who remained outside. In his revealing book, OSS, ex-CIA man R. Harris Smith discusses the selection of “Mafia types” for work with OSS operations in Italy, in what it called its “Operational Group Command.”[43] Smith also pointed out that the OSS assembled rather formidable criminal muscle from two of the land's most notorious killer gangs: “Murder, Incorporated” of New York City, and the equally lethal “Purple Gang” of Detroit.[44]

Recruiting 'Lucky' Luciano

One aspect of this US government information-gathering from the Mafia in advance of the assault on Sicily is as shrouded in mystery as the aspect involving the mobilization of Mafia help in policing the New York docks. There are half a dozen differing accounts relating how US intelligence services went about seeking the favor of “Lucky” Luciano, with various henchmen emerging as the supposed key figure in the negotiations. In one account it is Frank Costello, in another Meyer Lansky. Still other criminal luminaries appear to have been the person responsible.

Mussolini's Autobiography appeared in serial form in May 1928 in The Saturday Evening Post, one of America's most influential general-circulation magazines. Along with the first installment was an autographed photograph of Mussolini striding along an Italian seashore.

But in all the accounts two individuals always appear: Moses Polakoff, Luciano's principal legal advisor, and Murray R. Gurfein, a vigorous member of the team of prosecutors led by Thomas E. Dewey that brought about Luciano's conviction and jailing in 1936. Before the war Gurfein had been an assistant district attorney for the State of New York. After the war began, he was (according to some sources) affiliated with US Military Intelligence, and later in the war was reportedly an OSS Colonel.[45]

A Cultivated Legend

As time has passed, the secretive or embarrassing aspects of the Luciano case have gradually surfaced, along with a growing suspicion that there never was much of substance to stories of help provided by the Mafia to the US invasion forces. Far more important than any such help, it appears, was some labyrinthine proceeding related to Luciano's 1936 conviction.

In his own memoir, Luciano – in two separate and vehement scatological commentaries – denied having been of any assistance whatever to any branch of the armed services in the preparation or conduct of the Sicilian invasion.[46] He goes on to confess that he went along with the creation of this legend, knowing all the time that he was telling nothing but lies. (On one occasion, recalling a particularly spirited but fictitious retelling of the tale, in 1954, Luciano remarked in an aside that his theatrics in inventing imaginary details connected with his bogus part in the Sicilian invasion should have earned him an Academy Award.) In retrospect. the most lugubrious aspect of the entire Luciano/Sicily affair was the ludicrous patina of patriotism and related sentiments which it gradually acquired.

What Luciano knew about Sicily probably could have been supplied to US intelligence officials by anyone familiar with a library. As he protested later, he had been about nine years old when he emigrated from the island, and had no contacts there of any significance. In the large book that included his verbatim memoirs he mentioned only a single Mafia figure known to have survived the Mussolini suppression campaign in Italy or Sicily. This was Vito Genovese, an equally notorious American Mafia associate who had returned to Italy in 1937 to escape prosecution after Luciano's conviction, and for whom Luciano expressed unbounded distaste.

Luciano asserted that the entire thing had been fabricated to provide a cover for his pardon by Thomas Dewey – who was elected governor of New York in 1942 after his sensational career as a prosecuting district attorney proceeding against organized crime. Luciano maintained that he had been framed by Dewey's office, that the prostitution ring that flourished under his aegis was a “moonlighting” operation carried out by underlings, about which he knew nothing, and that his conviction had been made possible by perjured testimony on the part of women who claimed relationships with him that were totally imaginary. Luciano further stated that after his conviction his lawyers patiently went about confronting these witnesses, and secured from each of them an affidavit admitting that they had been encouraged to lie about Luciano in return for promises of luxurious vacations and other “fringe benefits,” most of which never had been made good, thus embittering them against the prosecution.

When Luciano was convicted in 1936, a stipulation in his sentence provided that he was to be deported upon completion of serving his sentence,[47] originally 30 to 50 years, to be served in the bleakest of the New York state penitentiaries, Dannemora. So his ultimate deportation was not in question; it was only a question of when this might happen. Luciano and Polakoff contended that even before the war was well along they had sufficient new evidence and affidavits of relapsed witnesses to begin proceedings against Dewey and his cooperating staff for a gigantic rigging of his case, based on subornation involving all key witnesses. With Dewey, who was now Governor of New York, and those connected with him knowing all this, of course, the next step therefore was an effort to hurry along a pardon so that deportation proceedings could be swiftly pursued and the whole impending scandal averted.[48]

The New York “Journal-American,” July 12, 1943, reports on the progress of American troops in the joint US, British and Canadian invasion of Sicily. In their occupation of the Italian island, Allied forces quickly gave authority to Mafia figures, who were trusted as “anti-Fascists.”

At this point the blending of the keep-the-waterfront-free-from-saboteurs and the aid-the-invasion-of-Sicily enterprises involving the Mafia took place, and Luciano's underworld friends with high political and other connections began the measures that were to lead to Luciano's pardon and deportation shortly after the end of World War II. The sudden change in Luciano's domicile from Dannemora to the somewhat more salubrious circumstances of Great Meadow prison at Comstock (near Albany) was the most instructive indication that an understanding between organized crime and US armed forces intelligence operatives had been fleshed out. From 1942 on, secret meetings between Luciano and youthful Lieut. Commander Charles R. Haffenden took place at Comstock prison. At the same time a stream of Mafia underworld figures also appeared regularly for audiences with Luciano, appropriately explained as part of the “Operation Underworld” operations to keep the New York waterfront free of Axis subversives.

Charles “Lucky” Luciano, in Italy following his pardon and deportation from the United States in 1946. During the early 1930s he organized the national crime syndicate in the US, ruling as the Mafia's “Boss of All Bosses.” In 1936 he was convicted and sentenced to 50 years imprisonment, but served only ten.

In the meantime the Office of Strategic Services went about creating its own team of spies and assistance elements for work in Sicily,[49] though Allied Intelligence in North Africa was not entranced with the quality of information it had been receiving in the period immediately preceding the invasion. According to one authoritative account, during that crucial time all native informers were ignored except those with Sicilian Mafia associates.[50]

Fables of Mafia Assistance

The literature and stories concerning the fabled assistance furnished by the Mafia in the Anglo-American assault on Sicily is confusing and contradictory. The failure of anyone ever to put on the record any convincing facts, and the persisting vague and mock-mysterious abstruseness about it all has encouraged the suspicion that much of the episode was fabricated. This further strengthens the belief that not only was Luciano telling the truth when he disclaimed having the slightest thing to do with providing information helpful to the Sicilian operation, but that little if any help was received from any other Mafia figure either, whether living in the USA or Sicily.

It took the Allies only 39 days to overrun Sicily – July 10 to August 18, 1943. The part taken easiest was the western half of the island, reputedly that area where the vestiges of the Mafia survived underground. But in what was essentially a military operation undertaken with overwhelming force, one must assume that the help supplied by a ragtag band of criminals infiltrated in the civilian population would of necessity be nominal, if perceptible.

Some recent sources still assert that Luciano supplied invasion officers with contacts with Sicily's only unjailed Mafia chief of any substance, Don Calogero Vizzini, as well as with Genco Russo, overseer of the immense land holdings in western Sicily of Prince Raimondo Lanza di Trabia. (Di Trabia was the personal aide to Major General Giacomo Carboni, one-time chief of the Italian Military Intelligence Service, and one of the chief plotters behind the original deposition of Mussolini. Carboni was put in command of the mobile defense force for the city of Rome on July 14, 1943.)[51]

Luciano's repudiation of any involvement of this kind, as well as the failure of him and his literary collaborators, Gosch and Hammer, even to mention Vizzini's name in a book of almost 500 pages, must be viewed as corroborating support for Luciano's insistence on total non-participation.

At any rate, a plethora of fantastic stories connecting Luciano with one aspect or another of the Sicilian campaign is still with us. World War II British army officer Norman Lewis, in his book The Honored Society: A Searching Look at the Mafia, asserted that Allied tanks went ashore actually flying yellow flags bearing the black letter “L,” which purportedly stood for Luciano.[52] Probably the most astounding of these fables alleges that Luciano himself was part of the invasion forces, despite unchallengeable evidence that the influential Mafia chief was ensconced in his cell at Great Meadows penitentiary throughout the operation.[53]

Allied 'New Order' in Sicily

In contrast to the opaque evanescence attending the alleged intelligence and strategic genius of the Mafia prior to the attack on Sicily, we have more solid information about the political new order established in the wake of the Allied military operations. Allied military and occupation leaders were soon emptying the prisons and labor camps of the Mussolini regime,[54] eventually turning loose upon Sicily and southern Italy a legion of convicted murderers, robbers and extortionists, as well as setting them up in business as the mayors of a long string of Sicilian communities – “Mafiosi to a man,” as Lewis puts it. To justify loosing the Mafia from jail, the Allied policy makers invented the notion that they were “victims of fascist tyranny,”[55] thus converting them into instant political prisoners, though what they really accomplished was the rebuilding of the Mafia's “state within a state,” as Lewis described their pre-1926 enclave.[56]

Vito Genovese

It should thus have come as no surprise to anyone, least of all the Anglo-American forces, that intricately integrated organized crime was flourishing in Sicily within a few weeks of “liberation.”[57]

The “liberators” brought something else in their train besides the Mafia: a rocketing inflation and an accompanying black market which dwarfed that which prevailed under Mussolini. The predecessor of each had already been seen in North Africa, where they had achieved memorable dimensions. The monetary disorder resulting from Anglo-American policies there had even brought a scolding in Business Week: “The US and British have yet to learn what the Germans have taught; occupation is made easier if money rates are unchanged or altered in favor of the local people.”[58]

'Liberation' Realities

Given that the American branch of the Mafia had squirreled away a vast fortune through their major hand in the stateside black market, it was not out of character that the revivified Sicilian and Italian Mafia, when given the chance, would promptly follow in their steps. A foundation was provided by the combination of ridiculous debasement of the money system and the mountain of desirable products brought to the Mediterranean by the occupation forces. The stealing of supplies from the Anglo-American forces or the bribing of personnel to supply them became a major Mafia industry.[59]

After a period of innocent wonderment, occupation police began to react. In general, though, it might have been easier to bail out the Mediterranean with a sieve than to eliminate the black market flourishing on all sides. Nevertheless a brave attempt was made. On September 9, 1943, authorities reported the arrest in Sicily of two Mafia chiefs, Domenico Tomaselli and Giuseppe Piraino, in a coup that allegedly smashed black market operations there.[60]

Mafia Revival Blamed on Fascism

In an effort to divert responsibility it was also alleged that the Fascists had mobilized the Mafia in its own aid,[61] though this sharply contradicted the program of release from Mussolini's prisons and penal camps of the very people who were supposed to be in Fascism's employ. This convenient line appealed to liberals, however, and was still being repeated decades later.

But blaming Mussolini did nothing to slow the sustained progress of the Mafia and the black market. A year later a succession of dispatches from Sicily reported that the Mafia were rampant in Sicily.[62] The gang system had reappeared, and Palermo was once more the scene of numerous holdups and kidnappings, while repeated press commentaries outlined the scope of the familiar outrages.[63] By the end of October 1944, most Sicilian communities were so insecure that virtually no one could be found to travel outside their perimeters at night, a situation that repeated, under far different circumstances, the realities of Europe's walled towns of the 12th century.

In early 1945 the Mafia was reported affluent and flourishing on the crest of a major Sicilian crime wave,[64] while a succession of sensational New York Times reports[65] told of the spread of gangsterism to Rome – another accompaniment to the advance of the “liberation” up the Italian mainland.

Vito Genovese and the Allies

During these expectable developments came the announcement in November 1944 that one of the most elusive and secretive of all of America's Mafia leaders, Vito Genovese, had been arrested by Army occupation police.[66] They had been working in collaboration with stateside authorities in connection with the unsolved murder in Brooklyn some years earlier of a minor Mafia hoodlum named Boccia. Genovese was “discovered” living in a luxurious apartment in Naples, and working as an interpreter for and advisor to the US Military Government, with high-level clearance and passes authorizing him to travel anywhere in Allied-controlled Italy.[67]

Local authorities had instituted the search for Genovese, who had quietly left the USA for Italy in 1937 in the wake of the conviction of Luciano, expecting to be next on the Dewey prosecution list.[68]

In Naples, where local authorities were cooperating with the US Military Government, Genovese was under investigation for his role in running a formidable black market operation since at least the “Allied” occupation of the area.[69] He had been operating right under the noses of the naive military governors with whom he worked in close collaboration almost daily, and who considered his aid and service indispensable.[70] It is probably as a reaction to the embarrassment that followed that an effort was made to try to conceal the realities of the moment by implying that Genovese had shady political ties with the overthrown Fascists, and that he had done the same things under Fascist aegis that were being uncovered under the new “liberation” regime. One energetic Army counterintelligence bloodhound even tried to portray Genovese as a German spy.

Still unexplained is the agonizingly slow movement of the extradition proceedings, and the discreet burying of the whole matter for many months after his arrest. Six months after his apprehension Genovese was still in Italy, and he did not arrive in America until June 2, 1945.[71] During his arraignment on a charge of complicity in the 1934 murder of Boccia, Genovese pleaded innocent. (His attorney was Hyman Barshay, counsel years earlier for the sinister killer Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, a key figure in the “Murder, Incorporated” gang.)[72]

The dismissal of the charges against Genovese (on grounds of insufficient evidence, following the death while in jail of a key prosecution witness), is incidental to this account.[73] In the years that followed, an immense tale grew up around Genovese and what he had been doing in Italy between 1937 and 1944, much of it based on not very credible assertions by hostile fellow gangsters, and his estranged wife during her testimony in divorce proceedings in 1952.

These versions tried to portray Genovese as a celebrity in Fascist regime during the years between his return to Italy in 1937 and his arrest in 1944. While all manner of wondrous involvements were attributed to him, none of these accounts alleged that he had anything to do with the Sicilian Mafia vestiges in those years, or that he was the spark behind the rebirth of organized crime all through the region which fell to the Anglo-American armed forces beginning in midsummer of 1943.[74]

Clemency for Luciano

In May 1945, just as hostilities were ceasing in Europe, attorneys for “Lucky” Luciano entered his petition for clemency before Governor Dewey.[75] Another tangled tale is connected with the events related to the eventual pardon and deportation of Luciano. His lawyer, Polakoff, was the first to tell the story to the press of Luciano's alleged assistance to the Mediterranean warriors, and naming Gurfein as the key person who had suggested that Luciano's aid be recruited. Polakoff was quoted as saying: “Through information the convict [Luciano] furnished the military from his cell in Great Meadows prison in 1942, many Sicilian-born Italians furnished information regarding the conditions in Sicily that was helpful to the armed forces in the invasion.”[76]

Under supervision of an Allied soldier, a policeman in Sicily posts “Proclamation No. 1” of the Allied Military Government. Another Allied notice posted at this same time ordered Sicilians to turn over their firearms to the occupation authorities.

Governor Dewey was ambivalent about the case. On January 3, 1946, in a comment on Luciano's cooperation with the armed forces, he added, “the actual value of the information procured is not clear.”[77] Dewey's attitude was somewhat more positive a few weeks later. He cited Luciano's usefulness to the US Army in the Sicilian invasion as the reason for the pardon[78] – a measure that many continued to think was far too hasty and precipitate.

For some time the responsibility for the action was traded back and forth between Dewey and the New York State Parole Board, and the subject was to become an issue of fitful significance for years thereafter. Luciano was deported a few days after his pardon. The story of his return to Italy on a small ship, and arrival in Naples on the last day of February 1946 has been retold many times.[79]

As citizens of Rome look on, US Fifth Army tanks roar by the ancient Colloseum as they begin to occupy the Italian capital. Allied occupation of Italy was a mixed blessing.

Luciano's reappearance in the Western Hemisphere the following year, culminating in a gathering in Cuba of major Mafia figures, led to another round of unhappy commentaries on Dewey's action in his behalf. Once again the press interviewed Gurfein and Haffenden about Luciano's wartime role in furnishing counterintelligence and other aid.[80] Now his role was being designated as “alleged,” and the more hyperthyroid sentiments that had been expressed in 1945 and 1946 were no longer heard. Observations about Luciano in February 1947 were drastically subdued and discounted compared to those a year earlier.[81]

Governor Thomas Dewey remained under clouds of suspicion for years, with persistent charges of having made enigmatic deals. His troubles over the Luciano pardon accelerated. When Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee began to assemble his machine for the much-publicized investigation of organized crime in America in 1951, he contributed to the tangle of allegations with the charge that Dewey's commutation of Luciano's sentence was not justified.[82]

Postwar 'Banditry' in Sicily

While military and political figures, and the press, were trying to decide whether or not Luciano should be enshrined by history as a patriot, the Italian mainland and Sicily were putting up with the mixed blessings of the new order brought to their midst by the Occupation. Another big crime wave swept both in January and February 1946,[83] while in Sicily the term “banditry” became the common euphemism for renewed Mafia labors.[84] Ultimately the mixture of liberal leftists (notably in the Christian Democratic Party) and social democrats that US occupation policy decreed should be Italy's new leadership found they were obliged to use the same strategy Mussolini had employed in putting down widespread organized crime. Ultimately, though, they used far more force in doing so than “Il Duce” ever employed in supporting the campaigns of Prefect Mori.

Though Mori had engaged in open warfare with the Mafia and fought encounters that involved enough men to rate as battles if they had taken place between rival States, the situation facing post-1945 Italy turned out to be considerably worse. It mainly revolved around the celebrated Salvatore Giuliani and his followers. Between 1946 and 1950, he became the best known Sicilian “bandit” of the entire modern era, and he and his followers earned as much space in the newspapers of the world as many of the global politicians in those first few years of the burgeoning Cold War.

To suppress Giuliani and his “bandits,” the postwar Italian government dedicated considerable resources. By the spring of 1949, 8,000 heavily armed paramilitary carabinieri police were fighting Giuliani's small band in virtual guerilla warfare that dragged on for months, and on a scale that made Mussolini's efforts of 1926-1934 look like mere outings by comparison.[85]

In the meantime the Mafia went about its quiet and diligent mending of fences, reestablishing control and influence and amassing substance on a scale again which outdid anything enjoyed before 1926 by many magnitudes, a total program that dovetailed with the conventional world of business and politics to the point where only experts could distinguish the component parts of the total situation.[86]

In both Europe and the United States, the approach to social order that has evolved in liberal circles looks upon a certain level of mayhem as an endurable price to pay for a “free society.” This novel view is supposed to explain and rationalize whatever may be prevailing in a culture that makes it incapable of controlling murder, aggravated assault and rape. After demonstrating ineptitude in law enforcement long enough, those in power offer plausible excuses to convince the unhappy that what prevails should be considered the “normal” or “moderate” response. In a cultural environment where such a climate of opinion prevails, it can be taken almost for granted that law enforcement such as that exemplified by Mussolini in reducing the Sicilian Mafia will always be deplored and reasons found to denounce it as infamous.

Editorial Note, Dec. 24, 2014

Today CODOH received the following email about the above paper:

Notes