Part of an article written by Thom L.Jones,its about placing the italian mafiosi as mayors of towns after WWII...

AMGOT (Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories) commander Charles Poletti, was encouraged to recommend the re-placing of mayors into towns and villages as an urgent measure following the allied force’s occupation of Sicily. Many of these were also Mafioso. In fact, 90% of the 352 newly appointed mayors were either Mafioso or people linked into the Separatist movement which was inextricably allied to the Mafia.
While AMGOT was busy helping re-establish the Mafia, wittingly or otherwise, the OSS (forerunner to the CIA) had recognized the dangers inherent in this. Captain W.E. Scotton, early in 1944, produced a report on the Mafia presence in Sicily warning of ‘the signs of Mafia resurgence and its perils for social order and economic progress.’
The OSS had allied with the Mafia as part of the invasion strategy of the Allies in their assault on Sicily, and the agency kept close to them in order to check the growth of the Italian Communist Party on the island. There was also the very real danger that the Sicilian Separatist Movement, led by Finocchiaro Aprile, in alliance with the Mafia, would use the turbulent times to try to free itself from Italian hegemony.
Di Carlo was allegedly a captain in the US Marines who was assisting in this re-establishment exercise, and would have obviously supported Dr. Navarra who was in fact his cousin. It would have been a short step from backing a mayor to backing a new boss of the other side of Corleone. There is, however, doubt that Di Carlo was even in Sicily, as he was deported back to Italy sometime after 1947.

Maybe it's a different Di Carlo? The biography of the one I talked about is presented here among other mafia biographies
http://legislature.camera.it/_dati/leg05/lavori/stampati/pdf/023_002223.pdf
(sorry I found it only in Italian) and there is no mention of him ever leaving Sicily.

He had a major role in Navarra takin over Corleone...
quote from the same article"Navarra perhaps had a strong ally in the form of a man called Angelo Di Carlo,it’s interesting to speculate that Di Carlo may have been instrumental in helping Dr. Navarra’s campaign to take over the Corleone cosca.

Yes, it's a different one. The one I talked about was called Vincenzo, not Angelo. But what happened to Angelo Di Carlo later, did he join Luciano Leggio or was he killed with the Navarra loyalists?

Maybe who knows,cant find any information on him except this...its from the same article..
"Born in Corleone in 1891 and a Mafioso, (as a young butcher, he had been a suspect in the killing of Bernardino Verro in 1915) he was one of the many who had fled Mori’s purge, sometime in 1925 or 1926 when he arrived in New York at the age of thirty-five. He had lived in America for almost twenty years. A tall man, with brown eyes and a heavy build, he ran a travel agency with his brother, Galogero, in New York. The FBN targeted him as a drug trafficker, among other things, using the business as a front"
....and he was 76 when he died so i think he died out of natural cause

Heres ANOTHER part of an article written by Thom L.Jones on how Luciano got out of jail...

But just how Charlie got his pass, and why he was allowed to sail off into the evening glow so to speak, on that miserable, rainy day in February, has always been a bit of a mystery. There have been lots words written about it, in a number of different books, with the basic premise something along these lines:

The New York Harbour, the biggest and most important in the USA, and the staging post for any future American involvement in World War Two, was at risk from Nazi attacks, both overt and subvert. The eyes and ears needed to aid Naval intelligence services were the dock workers and fishermen, and everyone knew that the mob controlled the waterfront, and Luciano, a.k.a. Salvatore Lucania, also known as Charlie Lucky, was obviously a very important man in the underworld. Ergo, he should be able to help secure the cooperation of the waterside workers to aid any intelligence operations.

A FBI report dated May, 1946 states:

In 1941, the security of the port of New York was a matter of great concern, not only to the Third Naval District, but to the Secretary of the Navy and the President of the United States, and further that in accordance with the directive issued by the Secretary of Navy, the activities of the District Intelligence Organization (DIO), in the Third Naval District were expanded to afford the required coverage in the port of New York.

It was also pointed out that considerable newspaper publicity concerning the Navy’s responsibility in this regard occurred in 1941, and as a result of it, the District Attorney of New York County, invited the DIO to discuss matters concerning the port of New York. At a meeting subsequently held, the District Intelligence Officer was informed that the ‘Rackets‘ Section of the District Attorney’s Office had numerous contacts in the underworld familiar with waterfront situations. Arrangements were made whereby pertinent information would be called to the attention of the DIO.

Then there was Lucky’s part in the invasion of Europe. A letter send to Charles Brietel, Secretary to Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, stated that the author:

was confident that the greater part of intelligence developed in the Sicilian Campaign was directly responsible to the number of Sicilians that emanated from the Charlie ‘Lucky‘ Luciano’s contacts.

and heres a link to the whole story...

http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/luckys-luck-how-charlie

Well, Like I said. We are in the middle of it. I have already met him and talked about the whole Book. I've read one of his book's - Mafia Brotherhoods.

Out of interest did you and the guy writing the book create that website ? Just wondering because there's only 9 pages on it.

Absolutely not true! As I said earlier, Luciano was NOT a boss of bosses. Not even technically speaking. He did not held sway over the other bosses in any way. I´m amazed over how so many people seems to think that. I have explained, perhaps in an inept way, how the legend and the myth of Luciano being some kind of a superboss got started. Get it out of your system guys. Luciano was (as you say) "first among equals" but nothing else above that. Why is this so hard to comprehend?

If I´m wrong then prove me wrong. But don´t copy and paste articles found on Wiki, or any articles written by Joe Schmuck posting on forums on the internet!

Lol ok if you say so. I don't think I have any proof, probably mostly circumstantial and personal opinion. You probably agree he was the most powerful and feared? That alone would give him a leg up over the others. For example, I doubt someone like Profaci could organize syndicate meetings from Havana, Cuba. As far as his influence over Mangano, I think Luciano used Adonis in some mysterious way. Anastasia was Adonis' lapdog for many years prior to becoming boss.

LOL yo HarryKnuckles calm down man i dont know what your problem is?maybe you knew Luciano personaly maybe you have somethin against Luciano(f***ed someones grandmother and stuff)everybody has a reason but since you get too much excited over this you must be at least 20-28 years old.so my point is this we all read books,watch doc's,read articles from mob historians and news paper guys,we all get the same information one way or another,WE ARE ALL HERE TO EXCHANGE THOUGHTS not to fight about it...so pls calm down,ok you are right..."Now go home and get your f****n' shinebox"

Yes I am and you know it.
You are obviously here to learn, sonny. It shows by the quality of your posts. And you´re wrong about we are all getting the same information. It´s clear that you are getting your information from all the wrong sources. But what the heck, if you have decided to get your "knowledge" from those dubious sources you are using, and dissing people with greater knowledge of the subject discussed on this forum, why should I care? That´s your problem. Not mine.
"Now, go and watch the latest doc on Luciano taking over the underworld based on the "Last Testament of Lucky Luciano". But beware, all your drooling may fuck your computer up".

E G O!thats your problem man,The all mighty!So right now you are talking the same thing for all these ppl here who agree with me and i agree with them,and we are having nice conversation about things and nothing went wrong,dont you see that iam asking about a lot of things and no1 have any problem with that and i like to discuss it,except your majesty,right?

^^^ to be fair toodoped he only disagreed with you and then you pretty much insulted him.

Take it down a notch and chill, boys!!

Ok.im sorry for any inconvenience to you all and to HairyKnuckles!peace

But I didn't do nothin' !

@ HairyKnuckles - Luciano was basically Boss of all Bosses he proved if anyone challenged him in anyway they would be killed. I liked Luciano because he didnt flash himself saying he was the ultimate boss everybody just knew it. Luciano controlled The Commission and to control La Cosa Nostra you need to control The Commission.

@ Carmel - No I didnt write that abotu my Grandfather, I was e-mailed about it and I had a look.

Cool. About Luciano what do you mean he proved it i'm not disagreeing with you id like some examples though.

Heres a part from a story about the Genovese rise up and the killing of Moretti,by Thom L.Jones...

Willie lay in quiet repose on the black and white lino floor. His left arm was crooked, thick, ham fist holding onto his heart long stilled; his ankles neatly crossed, a hint of sock showing, his eyes closed to the violence of that final moment, as his killers shot him, face on, a mark of respect- he had the right to see what was happening- the blood pooling out from under his shattered head, one of those awful ties, soaked in red, crumpled over the shoulder of his open jacket. They killed him with respect because it was to be seen as an act of pity, putting a sick lion to sleep. It wasn't of course. Imprudent as he may have been, Willie died to satisfy ambition, or maybe revenge, rather than to ameliorate a sad case of loose lips.

The cops never caught the guys who did it, which in mob killings is almost a given. They found a couple of fedoras, carelessly left on tables by the gang, and one of them was traced to a dry cleaners on 6th Avenue in Manhattan, which interestingly enough, lay just across the street from the apartment of the brother of one John 'Johnny Roberts' Robilotto, a guy well know to the cops.

Forty seven year old Johnny Roberts was originally sponsored into the Luciano organization by Tony Bender, a shifty, double-dealing crew boss, close to Vito Genovese, but Costello vetoed him on the grounds his brother was a cop. Albert Anastasia took a liking to him and worked him into his own family. Johnny was therefore a big supporter of Big Al; probably when Al said 'jump' Johnny would have said 'how high?'

In due course, the police arrested one Joseph Li Calsi and charged him and Robilotto, but the evidence against them didn't stack up, and they were subsequently released. So did Johnny kill Willie and if so, why would Albert A. sanction this? He was supposedly a close friend and ally of Frank Costello, hated Genovese with a vengeance and logically would have done nothing to help him in his attempt to dethrone Frank, which the killing of Moretti would surely have helped along.

But Al had gone to all that trouble to establish an alibi so must have known what was going down that morning. Did 'The Commission' ratify it, as has been supposed. Who knows? Maybe they did, maybe not. If they did, then surely Frank Costello had to be one who voted against the motion, but got lost in the numbers.

It's complicated, as are most mob politics. Everyone involved is long dead and the mob don't keep minutes, so all we have is hypothesis, a dangerous quicksand to navigate when dealing with Cosa Nostra lore.

Some sources claim there was an 'open' contract out on Willie, so anyone could kill him if and when the opportunity arose. But for Anastasia to go to the trouble arranging that alibi, indicates that he knew the killing was going down that morning.

Did Al hope to move in and take over Willie's very lucrative operations. Hardly. There's was Willie's brother Salavator 'Solly' the right bower, to contend with and 'Johnny Caboos' the left bower, Willie's trusted number two. Both tough guys, and don't forget the heavy hitters in the crew who respected and supported the boss. How would they react? Another theory that went around, was that Anastasia, worried about Moretti's behaviour insofar as it might impact on his own safety, had him killed before Willie killed him. But why would Willie lend a guy his driver, then kill him?

and a another interesting part...

The place where Willie got whacked is still a place where you can go to eat. The building, on the corner of Palisade and Marion Avenue, was bought and renovated by the Esposito family from Amalfi, Italy, who turned it, sometime in the 1980's, into the Villa Amalfi, one of the better Italian restaurants in this part of New Jersey. There's music and good food, friendly service and the only thing that gets whacked there to-day is the steak.

If it wasnt for Lucky Vito would have never even been an after thought.

Heres this part of a story(i dont know how true this really is but its inetersting to read)that i found it on crimerack.com from the "Vito Genovese Case File"...

Genovese preyed on small store owners and pushcart peddlers, selling them protection, stealing, and extorting. In 1917, he met a thief who was as cunning and crafty as himself, Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Luciano was seemingly smarter than Genovese, or Genovese let Luciano think so.
He became Luciano’s lieutenant and together both young men took up armed robbery and burglary. While going to meet Luciano one day in 1917, before committing a planned armed robbery, Genovese was stopped by a suspicious patrolman who frisked him and found a loaded revolver in his coat. He was arrested and given sixty days in the workhouse for carrying a concealed weapon.
Genovese blamed Luciano for this first of arrests, believing either that Luciano had informed on him so that he himself could avoid an impending arrest for fencing stolen goods, or because Luciano did nothing to get Genovese out of the workhouse, even though he had earlier promised his lieutenant to get him a lawyer and pay all fines if he should get into trouble.
At the time, Luciano visited Genovese in the workhouse and pleaded poverty. Genovese served every day of his sentence. Upon his release, however, Genovese went back to work for Luciano. He was arrested in 1918, again for carrying a concealed weapon. This time he paid a $250 fine.
He and Luciano were by then thriving with their small-time rackets, as lieutenants of gang boss Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen. At first, Luciano and Genovese, along with Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia, and others, concentrated on establishing a number of cheap brothels in Brooklyn and later Manhattan

and i find this a little bit funny..

Vito Genovese died in the Springfield (Illinois) Prison hospital of a heart attack on February 14, 1969.
Only relatives and a few lower echelon mobsters attended his funeral services. None of the bosses of the national crime syndicate made appearances. When Chicago boss Tony Accardo was asked why he had not attended Genovese’s funeral, he replied: “That guy? Hell, I didn’t even send a card.”

According to WIKIPEDIA Tommy Gagliano was born in 1884, which would make him 4 years older than Mangano.

Yes you are correct, Sonny. Nevertheless, Mangano was selected chairman.

Speaking of Gagliano, HK is there any proof he was alive beyond early 1930's? The last reported sighting was by Joe Valachi at his wedding in 1932.

http://www.americanmafia.com/Allan_May_6-19-00.html

Yes, his obituary appeared in New York Times, Feb 17,18 and 19 in 1951. I can´t copy and paste it but if you have access to old NY Times articles and obituaries, you will be able to see it.

Part from an article written by Tim Newark,bout WWII...

Talking to Sicilians in Palermo you soon get a clear picture of how they view their own history. They remember the delight of their parents being liberated by the Allies from Fascist rule and German occupation. They recall the pleasure of being given sweets and food by American soldiers—and wearing American clothes sold in local markets for years afterwards. But when you talk to them about the Mafia and the Allies, they have one certain vision of what happened.
“They make the same mistake, they make all the time,” says one Palermo resident, whose parents saw the bombs rain down on their city. “They made a deal with the bad guys and then we got stuck with the Mafia back in control.”

But is this true?
There are many anecdotes that support the notion that the US did strike a deal with the Mafia to help them conquer Sicily. The most famous story is that Allied troops and tanks rolled into Sicily in 1943 carrying yellow flags emblazoned with the letter ‘L’. The ‘L’ represented the infamous mobster ‘Lucky’ Luciano.
From his Great Meadow prison cell in New York State, Luciano had struck a devil’s deal with the US government to help them secure New York’s docks from Nazi or Fascist sabotage. As an extension of this pact, it is said, not a single shot was fired by Italian troops at the invading Americans in Sicily.
Despite Mussolini’s successful crusade against the Mafia, in the 1940s, the Mafia still commanded tremendous influence in Europe and America. As a result, the Allies needed the Mafia. Arguably, the US wartime government could not have controlled the vital New York docks without the assistance of the Mob. The Mafia even believed it could alter the course of the war by assassinating Hitler and his top henchmen.
To uncover the truth of these remarkable claims, I have explored archives in London, Washington and New York, analysing first–hand intelligence reports made by Allied agents dealing with the Mafia on a day-to-day basis. Many of these reports have never been published before or cited in Mafia literature. I have visited the sites of notorious Mafia crimes and report the testimony of people who were there at the time—including those recorded in the secret Herlands report which remained top secret for decades after the events described. These accounts bring to life one of the most important – and hitherto unexplored – areas of the Allied war in Europe.
Some of the players in the game are known. Allied connections with the Mafia undeniably reached the highest level. Recommendations to work alongside mobsters were put before senior US generals and politicians—including supreme commander Dwight Eisenhower. Even war leaders Churchill and Roosevelt were keen to exploit Italian-American connections. Notorious gangsters Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese all played their part in the war on Hitler and Mussolini, mixing easily with senior military officials on both sides.

I think Joe Bonanno desnt get his due.i this, ive read many times he is the one who was came to by lansky lucky and co to actually make this overseas connections but he stepped aside in order to make Lucky look as valuable as possible to th govt in hopes of springing him from the joint, it worked to but not like any of them planned.

Toddo, I don´t konow, but I think you missed out on the vital parts of the article. Here´s another one by Tim Newark:

"One of the great conspiracy theories of the Second World War is that the ­Americans struck a deal with Mafia mobsters to ­conquer Sicily. Tim Newark exposes the truth behind this notorious story of Mafia collaboration."

"Despite Mussolini’s successful crusade against the Mafia in the 1920s, it survived in Sicily and twenty years later Sicilian gangsters commanded tremendous influence in Europe and America. After Pearl Harbor and Germany and Italy’s declaration of war on the US in December 1941, there were huge fears about an attack on America’s Eastern seaboard. To protect New York and its docks, US government security agencies were anxious to talk to anyone who might help including the Mafia.

There are many anecdotes that support the notion that the US struck a deal with the Mafia to help them conquer Sicily. The most famous is that Allied troops and tanks rolled into Sicily in 1943 bearing yellow flags emblazoned with the letter ‘L’. The ‘L’ stood for Sicilian-born gangster Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano – king of the New York underworld in the 1930s. Luciano was in prison in New York State in 1942, but he still exerted tremendous influence. It is often claimed that, as a result of the deal he made with the US government to secure New York’s docks from Nazi or Fascist sabotage not a single shot was fired by Italian troops at the invading Americans in Sicily.

The Second World War still casts shadows on the streets of Palermo. Near the harbour, around Piazza Fonderia, you can see the bomb shattered remains of buildings hit by the Allies in preparation for their invasion of the island. Along the Via Roma, you can step into the foyer of the Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes, little changed in its marble and mirrored luxury since Luciano stayed there in 1946, after being deported from the United States for mysterious wartime deals.

Sicilians remember the delight of their parents at being liberated from Fascist rule and German occupation by the Allies in 1943. But they have a different view of what happened between the Mafia and the Allies: ‘They made a deal with the bad guys and then we got stuck with the Mafia back in control’ said one Palermo resident, whose parents saw the bombs rain down on their city. But how true is this claim?

The collaboration between the US government and the underworld to defend America’s East Coast against sabotage is recorded in the Herlands report of 1954. This was an investigation carried out at the direction of the Governor of New York Thomas E. Dewey to record the exact detail of the contact between US Naval Intelligence and New York’s Mafia mobsters.

The US Navy were not happy with its findings, however, and the report remained secret for many decades afterwards. It is still unpublished.

It was the job of Naval Intelligence to get a grip on the security situation in the New York docks. Lieutenant Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden was put in charge of the Third Naval District’s investigations section, based in downtown Manhattan. As he expressed it:

I’ll talk to anybody, a priest, a bank manager, a gangster, the devil himself, if I can get the information I need. This is a war. American lives are at stake.

But initial attempts were scorned by the underworld who controlled the docks. Luciano’s fellow mobster Meyer Lansky, recalled:

Everybody in New York was laughing at the way those naïve Navy agents were going around the docks. They went up to men working in the area and talked out of the corner of their mouths like they had seen in the movies, asking about spies.

Luciano was later quoted on the subject:

As far as Haffenden was concerned, he didn’t know nothin’ that was goin’ on except that he was sittin’ there with his mouth open, prayin’ I would say yes and help his whole department…

It took a spectacular disaster to get both sides talking seriously about protecting America’s East Coast and this happened on the afternoon of February 9th, 1942. While it was in the process of being converted into a troopship, the luxury ocean liner, Normandie, mysteriously burst into flames with 1,500 sailors and civilians on board. All but one escaped but 128 were injured and by the next day it was a smoking hulk. In his report, twelve years later, William B. Herlands, Commissioner of Investigation, made the case f­or the US government talking to top criminals:

The Intelligence authorities were greatly concerned with the problems of sabotage and espionage ... Suspicions were rife with respect to the leaking of information about convoy movements. The Normandie, which was being converted to war use as the Navy auxiliary Lafayette, had burned at the pier in the North River, New York City. Sabotage was suspected.

It was a bitter blow to the American war effort – but it pushed Lucky Luciano, Lansky, and Naval Intelligence together. Some time between May 15th and June 4th, 1942, Meyer Lansky and a lawyer visited Luciano in prison to discuss working with Naval Intelligence. Luciano later claimed that Haffenden was there also, and that he spoke to him directly. Having presented Luciano with a hamper of food containing, among other things, his favourite kosher green pickles, Lansky explained that by co-operating with Naval intelligence, Lucky might well get a reduction of his sentence. Otherwise he would have to wait until 1956 for his first chance of parole. Luciano said he was happy to help the government. He knew the important people on the waterfront and if he asked them to get interested in the war effort – then they would.

The Mafia network of enforcers and informers was so effective that, Lansky claimed, it was they who first got information about Operation Pastorius – the landing of German agents by submarine at Long Island in June 1942. Lansky said he was approached by the brother of an Italian fisherman who’d seen the four agents clamber out of the U-boat and row ashore. He then told Haffenden who passed on the information to the FBI.

Associates who owned restaurants in Yorkville were persuaded to hire German-speaking Navy agents as waiters to spy on Nazi-sympathizers in New York. So intimate did the relationship between Lansky and Haffenden become that Navy agents apparently ended up servicing Mafia-run vending machines in clubs. ‘They handed over the money they collected and were always honest in their dealings’ recalled Lansky. ‘I think this must be the only time the US Navy ever directly helped the Mafia.’

There is no doubt that Luciano, Lansky, and their associates provided vital assistance that kept the East Coast docks working efficiently. They formed a frontline of intelligence against any agents sent by the Axis to sabotage Allied shipping. The end result was that Allied convoys could carry on their vital job of moving soldiers and supplies to Europe to fight the war.

However, the Herlands report does not admit that this was achieved by gangsters using violence and illegal methods. This detail is left to the personal memoirs of Luciano and Lansky. Instead the report concluded:

No practical purpose would be served by debating the technical scope of Luciano’s aid to the war effort ... Over and beyond any precise rating of the contribution is the crystal-clear fact that Luciano and his associates and contacts during a period when ‘the outcome of the war appeared extremely grave,’ were responsible for a wide range of services which were considered ‘useful to the navy’.

In February 1943, Luciano hoped to capitalize on his contribution to the war effort. However, Philip J. McCook, the judge who had originally sentenced Luciano in 1936 to 30-50 years for organizing prostitution, refused to modify his sentence now. The government wanted to keep him in prison for the moment. The war was not over. Besides, if he had been released he would have been deported immediately to Italy. But what else could he and the Mafia do for the government?

Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily, homeland of the Mafia, commenced on the night of July 9th/10th, 1943. A vast Allied armada of 2,500 vessels surged towards the south-eastern tip of Sicily bearing 181,000 men of the US Seventh Army and Montgomery’s British and Canadian Eighth Army.

A report of April 9th, 1943, the Special Military Plan for Psychological Warfare in Sicily, prepared by the Joint Staff Planners for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who approved it on April 15th, had described the

Establishment of contact and communications with the leaders of separatist nuclei, disaffected workers, and clandestine radical groups, e.g., the Mafia, and giving them every possible aid.

That included 'Smuggling of arms and munitions to those elements', the Organization and supply of guerrilla bands', and the 'Provisioning of active members of such groups and their families.' The JSP, it appears, was strongly recommending the arming of the Sicilian Mafiosi and would encourage them to carry out sabotage on bridges, roads and military installations. In retrospect, it is a sensational admission, but at the time the Mafia were considered just another dissident element.

Among the first waves of assault troops that hit the beaches was a New York Naval Intelligence team consisting of Lieutenants Anthony Marsloe, Paul Alfieri, Joachim Titolo and Ensign James Murray. They were armed with all the information they had gathered from Luciano and his mobsters and put it to use straight away. In the words of Alfieri:

One of the most important plans, was to contact persons who had been deported for any crime from the United States to their homeland in Sicily, and one of my first successes after landing at Licata was in connection with this, where I made beneficial contact with numerous persons who had been deported … They were extremely cooperative and helpful because they spoke both the dialect of that region and also some English.

One of Alfieri’s first contacts on landing was a man whom, at the age of sixteen, Luciano had saved from the electric chair after he fatally shot a policeman on the Lower East Side. Following the intervention of the boy’s mother, who was a cousin of Luciano, the Mafia boss sent him out of New York via Canada to Sicily. He had become the head of his local mafia and kept up with other criminals deported from the US. At Alfieri’s request, the local Mafioso attacked the headquarters of the Italian naval command. This was hidden in a holiday villa set back from the beach. The German guards were killed and Alfieri was able to enter and blow open a safe. In it were plans outlining German and Italian defences on the island, plus their radio code-books. It also contained information on the Axis naval forces throughout the Mediterranean. Map overlays detailed marine minefields and revealed safe routes through them. It was a tremendous prize that would save many Allied lives. For this Mafia-aided act, Alfieri was later awarded the Legion of Merit.

Such episodes have helped fuel the idea that the Mafia helped the Americans conquer the western part of Sicily. The reality is far less impressive when it came to its deployment in the rest of the Sicilian war zone. The contribution of the four US Naval Intelligence agents, though useful, was tiny and cannot be said to have had any major impact on the rest of the operation. The hundreds of pages of subsequent witness interviews aired by the Herlands investigation has swollen this minor contribution out of all proportion to any other intelligence aspect of the campaign. By far the larger contribution was provided by the US Army Counter-Intelligence Corps, who had eighty agents on the ground throughout the fighting. However, there is no evidence whatsoever of any kind of alliance between them and the Mafia in Sicily before or during the campaign.

The most notorious story about an alliance between the Mafia and US forces is told by the socialist politician and journalist Michele Pantaleone and retold in English by Norman Lewis. It centres on the town of Villalba in central Sicily near Monte Cammarata, near where, according to Pantaleone, German and Italian resistance to the American advance was concentrated. On the slopes of the Cammarata, Axis infantry and a detachment of German tanks commanded the road leading north to Palermo, well placed to blow-up the American convoy heading towards them. The towns of Mussomeli, lay to the south-east, and Villalba, to the east.

On July 14th, four days after the Allied landings, an American fighter plane flew over Villalba. ‘The aircraft dipped so low,’ wrote Pantaleone, ‘that it almost grazed the roof-tops and a strange banner or pennant could be seen fluttering from the side of its cockpit. The pennant was made of a yellowish-gold cloth and there was a large black ‘L’ carefully drawn in the middle.’

The aircraft then dropped a bag near a farmhouse belonging to the sixty-six-year-old Don Calogero Vizzini – Don Calo – an influential Mafioso in the region. The bag was recovered by one of Don Calo’s servants, who took it to his master. Inside was ‘a foulard handkerchief which looked as if it was made of gold, exactly the same colour as the cloth hanging from the aeroplane.’

The silk handkerchief was a traditional Mafia method of contact. On this one the black ‘L’ stood for Lucky Luciano. In response, Don Calo wrote a coded letter to Giuseppe Genco Russo, the second most important Mafioso in the area, telling Russo to do everything he could to make the Americans happy and secure.

Five days later, on July 20th, three US tanks entered the town of Villalba. According to the Pantaleone-Lewis account, one of them flew a yellow flag with the black ‘L’ from its turret. When the tanks stopped in the town square, an American officer climbed out of one and, in the local Sicilian dialect, asked for Don Calo. In due course, the Don turned up, accompanied by one of his nephews who had just returned from America, and, without a word, handed over his yellow flag to the American officer.

The next day, on the heights around Monte Cammarata, where the Axis commander, Lieutenant Colonel Salemi, hoped to pulverize the Americans, two thirds of his troops had deserted. Left alone, the remaining Germans decided to withdraw in their tanks.

Some of the Italian troops later claimed they had been approached by Mafia agents in the night who told them they were in a hopeless situation and should leave. They offered the soldiers civilian clothes and any other help to go home to their families. The following day, Colonel Salemi, was intercepted by the Mafia and taken prisoner to the town hall in Mussomeli. The battle of Cammarata had been won apparently without a shot being fired thanks to the intervention of the Mafia.

The US soldiers at Villalba who took Don Calo away with them in their tank were most likely Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) officers, operating in advance of the main troop formations. But the official CIC history of the campaign in Sicily, produced in the early 1950s, does not mention the Mafia and does not mention the incident at Villalba at all.

Michele Pantaleone is the main source for the Luciano-Vizzini story and he, as an enemy of Dan Calo, is a very biased source. Wartime OSS documents reveal that his family was in dispute with the Vizzini clan over a local property issue and this – along with him being a Communist and political rival of Vizzini – casts doubt on his view of events. And yet it is his seductive tale of Don Calo that has been endlessly repeated. The fact is, it appears, it never actually happened.

According to US field reports, there was no major Axis position on the northern slopes of Monte Cammarata that could have provided any hindrance to the American advance to Palermo. That the US visit to Villalba on July 20th may have been purely routine, and had nothing at all to do with a bigger plot to use the Mafia in their campaign, is further suggested by an account of the day’s events by Luigi Lumia, a former mayor of Villalba, recorded in his later history of the town.

At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon of July 20th, three US tanks rolled into the town of Villalba. Trying to make themselves heard above the squeals of delight from the town’s children, soldiers appeared from the turret of the tanks asking where the person in charge could be found—il capo del paese. Not long after, a procession of people with Calogero Vizzini at the helm made its way towards the tanks chanting: ‘Long Live America’, ‘Long Live the Mafia’, ‘Long Live Don Calo’. The Americans asked whether there were any German troops in the area and on hearing that there weren’t, they took il capo del paese [Don Calo] on board the tank together with Damiano Lumia who was acting as his interpreter.
The two men were then taken to Turrume-Tudia and questioned by a US official in the presence of enemy soldiers. During the interrogation, it was revealed that an American jeep on patrol had come under fire a few days earlier at a road junction not far from the town. According to his interpreter, Don Calo told the American that the Italians had fled and the firefight had been caused by exploding ammunition. The Mafioso assured him they faced no local enemy, but this answer just annoyed the American interrogator.

According to Luigi Lumia, the Americans merely wanted to know what opposition they faced and certainly did not treat Don Calo with any respect. In fact, Don Calo was thoroughly embarrassed by the whole incident. There is no hint of any pre-arranged deal. So much for the great conspiracy.

Overall, the so-called devil’s pact with Luciano is a fascinating footnote in the history of the Second World War, but not a major scandal. The Allies did not get and did not need the help of the Mafia to win their campaign in Sicily. Far bigger powers of industrial organization, economic competence and military expertize defeated Axis forces – and the Mafia played no part in that.

Yet, by dismantling the Fascist hold on local rule, the Allies created a power vacuum that was soon filled by local Mafiosi. This was neither the fault nor the intention of the Allies; it was certainly not a pre-planned conspiracy among the Americans and British to resurrect the Mafia, which needed no such outside help. In fact, numerous reports testify to the Allied view that the Mafia was a criminal nuisance – Lord Rennell, who headed the civil affairs administration, and who took a tough line on law and order, strengthening the authority of the Carabineri, called them a virus that should be crushed. He was aware of the part played by the Mafia in local crime and worked hard to reduce the food shortages and black-market exploitation that made the mobsters rich in the immediate post-conflict period. It is true that some Allied officers exploited the situation and worked with the Mafia to divert Allied supplies onto the black market. Yet the early success of the imposition of law and order encouraged senior Mafiosi to pursue their grab for power through politics instead, which eventually allowed them to pose as a part of the Western strategy against Communism, and as effective enforcers for the conservative Christian Democratic Party, an alliance that endured for almost fifty years.

Meyer Lansky, reviewing this history, had his own take on the Mafia role. ‘If they had wanted to,’ he said in his memoirs, ‘the Mafia could have paralysed the [New York] dock area.’ He had asked Haffenden what would happen if there was a shutdown. ‘Without the supplies we’re sending to Russia and Britain,’ said the Naval Commander, ‘the war would go on a lot longer. It could even change the course of the war.’ ‘So,’ said Lansky ‘in the end the Mafia helped save the lives of Americans and of people in Europe.’

But it was thanks to the sacrifice of honest soldiers that the Allies won the war."

///Tim Newark is an established author and a heck of a researcher. You should grab his book, "Lucky Luciano, the real and the fake gangster". It´s a good read.

http://www.historytoday.com/tim-newark/pact-devil

^^^ Thanx for this one,so after all the mob had its involvment in the war and the goverment had its secret plan..by the way ill order the book gotta go deeper in this things