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Author Tim Newark |
‘We gotta wack the Führer’
From a prison cell in New York, mafia gangster ‘Lucky’ Luciano decided the war against Hitler was not going to plan, and decided it was time he intervened. Tim Newark’s book tells the story.Review by Peter Gruner
The Mafia at War: Allied Collusion with the Mob. By Tim Newark. Greenhill Books £19.99.
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IN 1943 notorious American gangster, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, who was serving a 50-year prison sentence for running prostitution and extortion rackets, summoned two of his most trusted henchmen to his New York State cell.
“Somethin’ hadda be done with this guy Hitler,” he told his colleagues.
Luciano explained how he had been following the war with a huge battle map on the wall of his cell and wasn’t at all happy with the lack of progress being made by the Allies against the Germans.
As Tim Newark tells it in his fascinating new book, The Mafia at War, the mobster boss was unimpressed with American General Eisenhower’s so-called military strategy – or lack of it.
Luciano apparently was a big fan of the more aggressive General George S Paton, but thought that Paton was not getting enough of ‘da’ action in Europe.
“If somebody could knock off this son of a bitch [Hitler],” Lucky told his men, “The war would be over in five minutes.”
Luciano was deadly serious. He even worked out which of his men was best placed to “wack” the Führer.
One Vito Genovese would do the job. Vito was based in Italy and described by Luciano as the best hitman in the world.
“Besides, that dirty little pig owes his life to me and now it’s time for him to make good on it,” said Luciano.
“He’s so f***ing friendly with Mussolini and that punk son-in-law of his, that Count Ciano, he oughta be able to get close enough to Hitler to do it.”
The attempted assassination never happened but the Allies were more than grateful to the mob for their assistance.
One of the most extraordinary but least known tales to come out of the Second World War was how close the Mafia did become with Britain and America.
When Churchill said after Hitler’s invasion of Russia that he would ally with the Devil himself if necessary to bring the Nazis down, he spoke the truth.
Historian Newark – a popular figure in Highbury, Islington, as a local anti-parking and residents’ campaigner – has written a book that reads like a fictional thriller but is based on fact.
He recounts how Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel came close to killing Goering and Goebbels. Bugsy was living it up in Italy with a countess lover when he heard the two senior Nazis were in town.
He was only stopped from doing the deed by his Italian lover who pleaded at the last moment that if he assassinated the Germans, Mussolini would take revenge by killing her own husband.
It was after the mysterious sinking of the troop ship the Normandie in New York Harbour in 1942 that the American government appealed to the mob who controlled the ports to help with the war effort.
Lucky Luciano, once a poorly educated nickel-dime pimp, was now receiving visits from naval intelligence officers to his cell.
He agreed he would see the docks were defended from possible sabotage and his guys would watch out for German subs. But what was in it for him? He’d be released early from prison but would have to be deported back to the old country, Sicily. He agreed.
The book tells the epic story of how the Mafia was nearly destroyed by Mussolini; how it managed to prosper in the US; how it struck a wartime deal with the American government and then backed a bloody rebellion which resulted in Sicily almost becoming an independent Mafia realm.
Newark shows how the whole Allied chain of command, from Eisenhower to Roosevelt and Churchill himself, were prepared to give a nod to the Mafia in an effort to secure their help in the Sicilian invasion.
Mr Newark, editor of Military Illustrated Magazine, uses eyewitness accounts, contemporary reports and declassified intelligence, some never published before.
He said: “I’ve always been interested in the Mafia and particularly the exploits of Lucky Luciano. I came up with many of the facts about the mob while researching the Second World War.”
It was while he was researching his latest book in Sicily that one of the great modern Mafia leaders – who had been in hiding – was arrested.
“It was a big topic of conversation because this mobster had protected the people in Sicily for years,” Newark added. “Although the Mafia were villains they also brought a sense of law and order to a community. And they also supported the fight against Hitler.” |
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