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US army & the Mafia in WW2 Sicily?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Friday, 29th April 2011

  For decades this unlikely alliance was dismissed as fantasy or legend, but according to journo's investigating "Secret War" on UK Freeview Channel 12 ('Yesterday'), declassified Government files and documents show this to have been true.
  
  Even one for the eyes of Ike Eisenhower, specifically mentioning the use of the Mafia (in the US) as the troops fought through Sicily. All evidence leads to the fact that the US Government even encouraged Mafia aid.
  
  The story is that 'Lucky' Luciano, notorious crime boss jailed for 50yrs in 1936 for murdering a NY cop, wrung all of his many Sicilian contacts to provide intelligence (terrain, harbours and nazi troop movements etc) and in every way get support to smooth all obstacles (other than the nazis) in the paths of the US forces fighting through the island.
  Even US troops saying 'Mafia' or 'Lucky luciano' to Sicilian locals instantly won support.
  
  Of course, this didn't extend to the British army under Monty, who faced severely tough nazi resistance across the island, as the US and Patton won glorious headlines for their 'fighting prowess' (obviously, partly true) as opposed to the reality of colossal Mafia aid.
  
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Saturday, 30th April 2011

  Even US troops saying 'Mafia' or 'Lucky luciano' to Sicilian locals instantly won support.
  
  Of course, this didn't extend to the British army under Monty, who faced severely tough nazi resistance across the islandΒ 
  
  I doubt that uttering "Mafia" or "Lucky Luciano" was the magic trick generating instant support. I think that the hate for Mussolini who had cracked down on Mafia would be a more compelling factor.

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• Message 3

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 30th April 2011

  The OP made me go back to a few pages of John Steinbeck's war reports- finally published in book form as "Once There Was A War".
  
  One piece began "It is said, and with some truth, that while the Germans fight for world domination and the English for the defense of England, the Americans fight for souvenirs..It is estimated that two dividions of American troops could carry away the Great Pyramid , chip by chip, in twenty-four hours".
  
  
  But he also described the crushing poverty he saw in Sicily, and the fact that the occasional "fat cat" often had the special knife to show that he had been on the March on Rome, and was a privileged Fascist. These he expected to be the first victims of popular vengeance once the region had been liberated. But perhaps some of them were mafiosi?
  
  There is something in what Steinbeck describes as the "violence" of the local welcome to the GI's that suggests that the reality of the recent history was intertwined with thousands of years of experience in which such island dwellers learned to just accept and ride with the "tide of history"..
  
  Most recently this is the experience of that small Italian island that has found itself the first point of refuge for desperate people fleeing from Libya. They are all cost and no benefit, unlike the Americans who,as souvenir collectors, could be bartered with... Itally itself has opened the way for some of them to "move on" into the EU.
  
  In fact, though "Tea With Mussolini" is one of the few films that I love, it does sort of encapsulate the way that Italy became a European version of what pre-Castro Cuba was to the USA- a great place for tourism. The "scorpioni" are prepared to die for the WASP view of the greatness of Italy's world heritage, that only people of their class, place and time could really appreciate.
  
  The toursit trend was noticeable already in the Eighteenth Century, the great age of the aristocratic Grand Tour, when young men were sent off to get "culture" and also to sow their wild oats. Venice was famous for its prostitutes, concubines, and young gondoliers, who "moonlighted" as rent boys.
  
  It is the kind of culture in which disparity of wealth and poverty creates its own dynamism, and, of course, to some extent the whole GI experience in Europe was shaped by the reality that the Americans were seen as "Big Spenders".
  
  Our daughter and boyfriend arrived in Bali yesterday.. I wonder how much it has kept of the Bali that I first saw on films 50 years ago.
  
  Cass
  
  

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• Message 4

  , in reply to message 3.

  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 30th April 2011

  Of course come the war, no doubt the WASP policies that had tried to keep out or at least down the flood Mediterranean immigrants to the USA was probably forgotten. People of Italian roots were as welcome into the forces as African-Americans.
  
  And any inside-information was welcome from whatever source.. Of course once Hitler attacked the USSR Communists were also Allies, and the French Communist Party moved from collaboration to resistance within France on orders from Moscow.. People walking their dogs on beaches in Normandy were a vital source of information, and no doubt much the same applied in Sicily.
  
  But there is something of a tendency in these conspiracy theory times to pick out a " needle in a haystack" and assert that it was "the key element".. I suspect that war (and life in general ) is much more of a mess and muddle and that "the best laid plans of mice and men gang awray".
  
  Cass

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• Message 5

  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Sunday, 1st May 2011

  The doc was suggesting that, such was the 'respect' generated in Sicily by Luciano's name alone- as well as his orders- that the US GI's merely informally mentioned the words (in lieu of translation) and it activated a positive response from locals.
  
  As usual, the Brits had the heaviest fighting, though.

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