The Allies and the mafia

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 21-33

  Lupo, Salvatore ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA   (Italy)

Author keywords

Allies; Mafia; Second World War; Sicily

Indexed keywords

EID: 0003008560     PISSN: 1354571X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13545719708454937     Document Type: Review

References (38)

1. The report of the Anti-Mafia Commission was published under the tide Mafia e politica with an Introduction by N. Tranfaglia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1993);
2. see pp. 73 et seq. Of the works that have most fully endorsed the thesis of a conspiracy, M. Pantaleone's Mafia e politica (Turin: Einaudi, 1962) is the most widely known in Italy.
3. R. Faenza and M. Fini, Gli americani in Italia (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976), attempted to give the theory some documentary support but this was too often selected to conform with the thesis. An interesting documentary programme made by the BBC (The Allies and the Mafia) was transmitted by RTSI (Swiss Italian Language Radio TV) on 6 July 1993.
4. R. Mangiameli, 'La regione in guerra', in La Sicilia, ed. M. Aymard and G. Giarrizzo (in Storia d'Italia dall'Unità a Oggi. Le Regioni, Turin: Einaudi, 1987);
5. Mangiameli's Introduction to Sicily Zone Handbook 1943: Il manuale britannico per le forze d'occupazione in Sicilia (Caltanissetta-Rome: Sciascia, 1994);
6. F. Renda, Storia della Sicilia dal 1860 al 1970 (Palermo: Sellerio, 1987), Vol. 3.
7. See S. Lupo, Storia della Mafia dall'Unità ai giorni nostri (Rome: Donzelli, 1993), for fuller indications on the sources for the arguments set out in this article.
8. See also S. Lupo, 'L'utopia totalitaria del fascismo', in Aymard and Giarrizzo, La Sicilia, and C. J. Duggan, Fascism and the Mafia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
9. E. Kefauver, Crime in America (Westport, Conn., 1950).
10. See also R. Campbell, The L Project (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977).
11. The interview with Luciano was reported in G. Gellert, Maffia (Soveria Manelli: Rubettino, 1987), pp. 78-80.
12. On the subject of mafia as a protection business see D. Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia. The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
13. M. Corvo, The OSS in Italy. A Personal Memory (New York: Praeger, 1990).
14. See the evidence discussed by Mangiameli in the Introduction to Sicily Zone Handbook and by Carlo D'Este, Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily (London: Colliers, 1988).
15. D'Este, Bitter Harvest.
16. Corvo, The OSS.
17. See Pantaleone, Mafia e politica, p. 74.
18. According to S. M. Ganci ('La Sicilia contemporanea' in G. Cingari, F. Brancato and S. M. Ganci, La Sicilia contemporanea (Naples, 1979, p. 349)
19. about three-quarters of the mayors were mafiosi, a calculation which is puzzling and seems to derive from extending to the whole of Sicily what occurred in Palermo and from identifying all separatists as mafiosi. F. Gaja claimed that sixty-two out of the seventy-six mayors in the province of Palermo were separatists (L'Esercito della Lupara, Milan, 1962, p. 145),
20. an estimate similar to that made by Captain W. E. Scotten's The Problem of the Mafia in Sicily (29 October 1943, published in the Annali del Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, University of Catania, 1980, p. 627).
21. As well as the studies by Mangiameli and Renda, see G. Giarizzo, 'Sicilia politica 1943-1945. La genesi dello Statuto regionale', in Archivio storico per la Sicilia orientale 1, 1970, pp. 9-136.
22. L. Lumia, Villalba, storia e memoria (Caltanissetta: Lussografica, 1990), Vol. II., pp. 428-30.
23. Scotten, The Problem of the Mafia, p. 626.
24. Based on interview recorded for BBC, 6 July 1993 (see Note 1).
25. Scotten, The Problem of the Mafia, and Lord Rennel Rodd, H. L. Coles and A. K. Weinberg, Civil Affairs. Soldiers Become Governors (Washington, DC, 1964), letter dated August 1943, p. 210.
26. See Mangiameli, 'La regione in guerra', p. 499.
27. P. Arlacchi, Gli uomini del disonore (Milan: Mondadori, 1992), p. 46.
28. the letter from Finocchiaro Aprile dated 4 December 1943 is cited in Renda, Storia della Sicilia, p. 69.
29. It is also worth pointing out that those members of the OSS accused of collusion with the mafia were, unlike the British, also in favour of arming the anti-Fascist partisans: see R. Craveri, La Campagna d'Italia e i servizi segreti (Milan, 1980). There was an interesting exchange between Calogero Vizzini and Joseph Russo in the interview cited above when the mafioso offered his help against 'those damned Communists' and the OSS agent replied that he had no intention of taking any action against people who were also his allies.
30. See Lupo, Storia della Mafia.
31. For example, Calogero Orlando and Pietro Davì 'l'americano': see Storia della Mafia ibid., pp.190-1.
32. J. Albini, 'L'America deve la Mafia alla Sicilia?', in S. Di Bella (ed.) Mafia e potere (Soveria Mannelli, 1983), Vol. 1, p. 189 and
33. J. Albini, The American Mafia: Genesis of a Legend (New York, 1971).
34. President's Commission on Organized Crime 1, The Impact (Washington, DC, 1986), p. 52.
35. J. Bonanno, A Man of Honour: The Autobiography of Joe Bonanno (London: Deutsch, 1983);
36. for the testimony of Buscetta, see P. Arlacchi, Addio Cosa Nostra. La vita di Tommaso Buscetta (Milan: Rizzoli, 1994) .
37. BBC interview (1993).
38. Cited in A. Spanò, Faccia a faccia con la mafia (Milan: Mondadori, 1978), p. 89.