Never has the saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" had more
truth than when the US government and the criminal underground joined
forces to defeat the Nazi menace. For the first time ever the full story
of how Charles "Lucky" Luciano--the U.S. Mafia boss who put the
"organized" into organized crime--was recruited by U.S. Naval
Intelligence in 1942 to aid the Allied war effort in the U.S. invasion
of Sicily, a turning point in WWII.
In 1942, a rational fear was mounting that New York Harbor was
vulnerable to sabotage. If the waterfront was infested with German and
Italian agents then the U.S. Navy needed a recourse just as insidious to
secure it.
Naval intelligence officer, Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden had
the solution: recruit as his own spies, members of La Cosa Nostra. Pier
to pier, no one terrified the longshoremen, stevedores, shopkeepers, and
boat captains along the harbor better than the Mafia gangs of New York,
who controlled the docks in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Haffenden was
prepared to make a deal with the devil-the man who put "organized" into
organized crime. Even from his cell in Dannemora State Prison, former
Public Enemy #1, Charles "Lucky" Luciano still had tremendous power.
Luciano was willing to wield it for Haffenden. But he wanted something
in return--Luciano's contacts in Italy to track the Nazis' movements.
Operation Underworld is a tale of espionage and crime like no other, the
unbelievable, first-ever account of the Allied war effort's clandestine
coalition between the Mafia and the U.S. Government to protect New York,
vanquish the Nazis by taking the fight to the enemy in the 1943 U.S.
invasion of Sicily. It was an ingenious strategy carried out by some of
history's most infamous, improbable, and unsung heroes on both sides of
the law. It was a Faustian bargain that brought homefront enemies
together but, as journalist and crime historian Matthew Black reveals,
one that ultimately succeeded in helping the Allies win World War II.
