The War on Terror Spectator
Operation Underworld
The Mob versus the Nazis was an offer an Obama predecessor couldn’t refuse.
Quentin Tarantino’s darkly comic 2009 film, Inglourious Basterds, was rollicking Nazi vengeance porn, the core shtick being a handful of Jewish American soldiers wreaking havoc on Hitler, Goebbels, and their goose-stepping ilk. The movie was alternative history, of course, but the story of shtarkers, Jewish tough guys, going after Nazis has a basis in fact.
This is the theme of my new historical novel, The Devil Himself, which is about the very real collaboration between Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky and U.S. Naval Intelligence.
I have known Meyer Lansky’s family for years and had access to his personal recollections and private papers. Meyer’s activities, sanctioned by the government as part of “Operation Underworld,” included a Tarantinian mobilization of Jewish American mobsters against Nazi sympathizers and saboteurs, a campaign as cloaked in secrecy as SEAL Team Six’s recent takedown of Osama bin Laden.
On that subject, my early admiration of President Obama’s handling of bin Laden’s killing lost steam when his administration began twisting itself into pretzels to convey that the terrorist’s killing was done, uh, politely. Heaven forbid we hurt the feelings of the other homicidal maniacs that have Americans in their crosshairs.
As contemporary America contemplates how to deal with its enemies, it is worth looking at what the wartime administration of another liberal Democrat did when faced with foreign terrorists.
OPERATION UNDERWORLD began shortly after Pearl Harbor, when the cruise ship Normandie caught fire and capsized at Pier 88 in Manhattan in early February, 1942. The Normandie, the largest luxury liner in the world, was seized by the U.S. after France fell to the Nazis. It was being retrofitted for U.S. troop deployment when it was destroyed.
Many blamed the ship’s destruction on Nazi sabotage. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t, but at the time it was a reasonable assumption. The German American Bund had been a thriving pro-Nazi advocacy group in New York before the war. German U-boats were destroying U.S. ships in the North Atlantic at such a successful clip that Admiral Karl Dönitz dubbed his campaign the Third Reich’s “Happy Time.” More American sailors were killed under this initiative than died at Pearl Harbor.
Navy intelligence swarmed the New York docks to solicit the cooperation of the longshoremen to ferret out German spies. They were heartily rebuffed. The operating theory about the Navy’s cold reception was that the largely Italian dock workers may have been loyal to Hitler’s partner in mayhem, Italy’s Mussolini. While such an allegiance may have been the case with some of the stevedores, there was a better explanation: The men who worked the docks were averse by nature and culture to help out any authorities.
Gravely concerned, the Navy sought the advice of New York law enforcement. Prosecutors conceded that, yes, the mob-controlled longshoremen were a tough lot, but not all mobsters were knuckle-dragging simians—especially ones whose Eastern European Jewish landsmen were being rounded up by Hitler.
Indeed, Meyer Lansky had tried to enlist in the army after Pearl Harbor, but was rejected because of his age, just shy of 40, and his height, 5’ 4” in socks. Other Jewish mobsters had better luck. One of Meyer’s men, Doc Stacher of Newark, served in the Army. Cleveland boss Moe Dalitz entered the Army a private and came out a captain. Minneapolis killer Davie Berman and Chicago’s Charlie Barron were rebuffed, but enlisted in the Canadian army using fake names.
A meeting was arranged between Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden of the Third Naval District and Meyer Lansky at Longchamps restaurant. Haffenden was stunned when the diminutive mobster introduced himself, donning a conservative business suit, looking like a cross between an accountant from Arthur Andersen and a violin instructor. His eyes, hard and black, told a different story.
Haffenden’s pitch was simple: The Navy understood that the mafia controlled the waterfront, Nazi sabotage was suspected in the Normandie fire, German U-boats were likely getting information from somebody on the docks, and the longshoremen weren’t cooperating. Could Meyer’s men be of any assistance?
Meyer acknowledged he had been giving Bund members the business for years. With the help of men like his childhood friend, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, cutthroats like Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, Allie “Tick Tock” Tannenbaum, and Seymour “Blue Jaw” Magoon, Jewish racketeers had been breaking up Bund rallies in the Yorkville section of Manhattan using guns, knives, and baseball bats. The mob hastened the Bund’s demise by introducing mortal risks to its leadership.
Meyer clarified for Haffenden that there was no such thing as the mafia (heh), that he was a simple investor and music distributor (uh huh), but that he’d help because “it’s patriotism.”
He added that there was a man who was greatly respected by the Italian toughs on the waterfront who might be able to assist. The good news was that this man was Meyer’s old friend. The bad news was that this friend was doing a 30- to 50-year prison sentence in an upstate New York prison known as “Siberia.”
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PattyMor| 9.14.11 @ 8:13AM
There was a time in America that our leadership would pull together and pull out all the stops to win a war. My how things have changed. We now have Democrats saying "This War is Lost" and comparing our troops to Nazis and Pol Pot.
Just where is Cindy Sheehan and her little merry band of agipropters now that Obama is lobbing tons of predator drone, engaged in four or five wars, and executed OBL?
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 3:40PM
Sheehan is on the lecture circuit, natch.
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 4:06PM
... say, maybe as Leary teamed up with Liddy; and Matalin teamed up with Serpent-head;
Sheehan could team up with Bush on the book circuit. It WOULD sell many tickets.
And many books.
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 5:39PM
Not only did Luciano admit he did nothing to aid the war effort, others connected to him admitted the same thing.
Plus, Peter Maas wrote: "what [Luciano] did has never been pinned down."
Melvin| 9.14.11 @ 8:34AM
Well, first it has to be declared that we are at war. Nowadays war is called, "Kinetic Military Action."
But to the poor bugger who has 7.62x39 whizzing past his or her nose, it's still called war.
Ken (Old Texican)| 9.14.11 @ 8:53AM
WoW!
heck out this article over at NRO!
Thank you God for George W Bush and Dick Cheny.
http://www.nationalreview.com/.....-jim-lacey
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 3:42PM
Of course! Lacey has ties to Mush and Brainy; so of course he is going to spin their roles in the very sunniest light.
But glad you are such a sucker, Tex-- it will keep you in your place by being used as a chump.
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 3:54PM
Ken, did you ever fully consider what a hose job the Bush administration did on you? they completely un-did what Reagan did in helping to end the Cold War.
By 2008-- before Obama was sworn in-- the government had become larger than it had under FDR and LBJ. I'm not writing that it was the fault of Mush 'n' Brainy, but 2008 was on their watch, so they were both somewhat culpable. I just finished Cheney's memoirs; Cheney 's book is the most masterfully self-serving con job in paper form. Cheney is a genius who ought to president himself-- if he had the top job, Cheney could con every single person in America.
Tex:
you must have been very drunk 2001 to '08, because you were cluster-boinked without even knowing it! when you woke up in 2009, you had no idea how royally you were screwed!
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 4:02PM
...but it must be said, Ken, that Cheney and Bush were and are thorough professionals with a very gentle touch:
for eight years Cheney and Bush had their way with your every orifice, but you never woke up once.
AhiaGuy| 9.15.11 @ 10:18AM
"Cheney 's book is the most masterfully self-serving con job in paper form. "
I would be willing to bet that 2 autobiographies before the age of 50 puts Prez O right up there in the running.
bluecollarbytes| 9.14.11 @ 9:27AM
The mob offered dock 'security' , 'protection', from sabotage by the 'Goonions', goonions controlled by the mob. A ship was sunk by the mob's goonion members in order to set up the release of Luciano.
This is one alternative explanation. And given the known reality of the mob over decades, it's likely.
Alan Brooks| 9.14.11 @ 6:42PM
Peter Maas wrote that what Luciano did for the war effort has never been pinned down.
Because there was practically nothing to pin down. Luciano was bitter at having spent five-six years in prison on his conviction in 1936 (for being a master of brothels in NY) so he went through the motions of aiding the war effort.
WRTolkas| 9.14.11 @ 9:42AM
I read this article and thought immediately of the 1941 Humphrey Bogart film: All Through the Night. New York mobsters vs Nazi saboteurs.
RAMIII| 9.14.11 @ 10:11AM
Look at it this way: Real intelligence comes from people with real knowledge. This is the only way to get to the winning side of things.
We who wish to wear white gloves with not a smudge on them must acknowledge that without this kind of action (as described in the article) we would be laying in a casket with those white gloves sooner than we anticipated it.
Just sayin'
Joe R| 9.14.11 @ 10:35AM
One major mistake in this article--Lucky Luciano was an American citizen having been born in Brooklyn. As one of the terms of his parole he agreed to leave the country and never return. Italy, which was occupied by Allied forces at the time, agreed to take him.
Mike D.| 9.14.11 @ 11:53AM
Luciano was one of the few Mob Bosses that really did "get away with it" .
Ed| 9.14.11 @ 11:42AM
Good article. The OSS was also involved in getting Sicilian mobsters to work against the Nazis and Fascists. Both parties were "bad for business".
Rich Rostrom| 9.15.11 @ 12:36AM
There were no Axis spies or saboteurs at work in the U.S. The pre-war German spy ring included double agent Harry Sebold, and the whole gang was rounded up in mid-1941.
The Abwehr tried to set up a new ring - but sent another double agent, Dusko Popov, who was reporting to British intelligence. The British wanted to use Popov to create a fake spy ring and feed the Germans disinformation, but Hoover was incapable of seeing past headline-grabbing arrests.
Popov went back to Europe in 1942, leaving nothing for the Germans in the U.S.
There was no sabotage involved in the NORMANDIE fire, and there were no Axis agents reporting ship movements to the U-boats.
All this was verified after the war, when the files of the Abwehr were captured by the Allies.
So there was nothing much to be gained from deals with the Mob. In the U.S., anyway - Sicily was different.