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.”
Charles “Lucky” Luciano had been convicted of running
prostitution rackets six years earlier. After Meyer advised
Haffenden that one shouldn’t approach a Sicilian expecting
something for nothing, a bewildered Luciano was moved in the dead
of night from the inclement Clinton Correctional Facility in
Dannemora, New York, to the more hospitable Great Meadow Prison in
Comstock.
Shortly after his arrival, Luciano was escorted into the
warden’s office where he was greeted by Meyer and his attorney
Moses Polakoff. The men had brought the overjoyed Luciano Italian
and Jewish delicacies from Manhattan.
Luciano agreed to help. He ordered his capos, who were permitted
to visit him, to cooperate with the Navy. Of course, he wanted
something in return for his cooperation: his freedom. Haffenden
agreed to do his best.
IN THE SUMMER of 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs were captured soon
after they came ashore via U-boat near Amagansett, Long Island, and
Jacksonville, Florida. They had brought with them lots of cash,
explosives, and plans to blow up American defense plants, bridges,
railways, and Jewish-owned department stores.
These saboteurs weren’t the Third Reich’s first string. Their
leader turned himself in to J. Edgar Hoover. Some of the others
were captured when mob-controlled union members employed at New
York hotels reported them to naval intelligence.
For his part, President Roosevelt, a nighttime reader of
gangster novels, was ruthless when it came to dealing with the
Nazis. He wanted to execute all of the saboteurs without as much as
a public utterance. Instead, two of the saboteurs were given long
prison sentences and six of them, after one of the swiftest Supreme
Court reviews in history, were executed at the District of Columbia
jail and buried in a nearby potter’s field. Roosevelt even joked
about the executions while mixing drinks at the presidential
retreat, Shangri-La.
In one of the stranger coincidences in history, FDR was very
close to the powerful journalist Walter Winchell, who was, in turn,
a friend and neighbor of Meyer Lansky in the Majestic House
apartments on Central Park West. Winchell was an unrepentant
propagandist for the American cause, and he was unafraid to work
with gangsters to publicize their beat-downs of Nazi
sympathizers.
While history is clear about Roosevelt’s active engagement in
wartime espionage, the substance of any FDR-Winchell-Lansky
interaction remains unknown. Still, imagine the mere spectacle of
such a dotted-line triangle given today’s transparency fetish.
Domestic sabotage was a non-issue for the remainder of the war.
This was due to factors besides Operation Underworld, of course,
but German spies mustn’t have found the New York waterfront
hospitable with the likes of Bugsy, Lepke, & Company roaming
Lower Manhattan.
Meyer and Luciano’s services didn’t stop here. When it came time
to invade Sicily, Commander Haffenden again brought in the boys.
They provided naval intelligence with mafia contacts in Sicily that
were instrumental in both the initial landing (courtesy of maps
provided by local fishermen) and in locating strategic Nazi
strongholds. It wasn’t all about patriotism: Mussolini had cracked
down hard on the Sicilian mafia and homegrown gangsters wanted him
out.
For his service, Luciano’s prison sentence was commuted by New
York governor Thomas E. Dewey, who had been the very prosecutor to
put him behind bars. Luciano, who never bothered to become an
American citizen, was deported to Italy, never to regain his
position atop the American underworld.
To be sure, mafiaphiles have exaggerated the contributions of
racketeers to the war effort. Especially preposterous is the
folklore that has Luciano storming onto Sicilian beaches beside
Patton waving a yellow flag emblazoned with the letter L to
liberate the countryside.
It’s hard to imagine either the president or the media in the
age of WikiLeaks tapping the Sopranos to whack al Qaeda. Both the
successful conquest of Sicily — which, nevertheless, included the
Allied air bombing of our own troops — and the initial slaughter
at Normandy would have been declared “quagmires” by today’s
reporters. Contrast this with American journalists during FDR’s
day, who barely reported Hitler’s demoralizing “Happy Time” duck
shoot against U.S. vessels.
Somewhere along the line, being seen as apologetic and gentle
has trumped other priorities in international affairs. Envision FDR
or Truman offering frantic assurances that Hitler’s body reached
its final resting place in strict accordance with Waffen SS
tradition. Or that the Hiroshima bomb incinerated tens of thousands
humanely.
Still, at least one thing about Operation Underworld would
translate to 21st-century Washington, namely the fate of the Navy
officer who ran the program. Commander Haffenden was shipped to Iwo
Jima in the hope he wouldn’t make it back. He did, but was severely
injured. His reputation was dragged through sea clutter when word
of Operation Underworld leaked and became the subject of
investigations. Positioned as a rogue agent, Haffenden turned to
alcohol and became a Dictaphone salesman, dying on Christmas Eve,
1952.
MEYER LANSKSY’S best days were ahead of him. He attempted to
clean up his fortune in Las Vegas and Havana, where he was the czar
of Cuba’s legal gaming and resort industries. When Havana fell to
Castro, he lost his most lucrative legal holdings. His every move
shadowed by law enforcement, Meyer attempted to gain Israeli
citizenship under that country’s Law of Return, but was considered
a liability and was forced to return to Miami Beach, where he died
in 1983 of natural causes—in bed, with his shoes off.
As I portray in The Devil
Himself, Meyer was intensely proud of his
service in World War II. He was motivated by an immigrant’s desire
to prove he was a “real American,” a concept that is hard to
imagine in today’s climate, in which such a wish would be greeted
by the dominant media culture with an eye roll.
Unlike his partner Luciano, Meyer was an American citizen who
received his Certificate of Naturalization after the war. He was so
enthralled with his Navy collaboration that he sent his son Paul to
West Point.
The deranged mob boss Albert Anastasia was said to have told
Meyer, “Someday, my boy’s gonna run the Brooklyn waterfront.” Meyer
responded, “That’s nice. My son works at NASA.”
He wasn’t kidding. Paul Lansky was an engineer on the Apollo
space program and one of the first military advisors in
Vietnam.
The value of Operation Underworld can be legitimately debated.
What cannot is how far our leaders were once willing to go to
defeat our country’s enemies. There was a time—bada bing!—when even a
mobster’s contribution was an offer we couldn’t refuse.
