Posted on 03/13/2025 2:37:05 PM PDT by Retain Mike
Staggering losses in the Battle of the Atlantic during 1942 led many U.S. Navy officials to believe that Germany’s Kriegsmarine was receiving assistance from Axis sympathizers on the U.S. East Coast and had spies in New York City. To counter this threat, the Office of Naval Intelligence’s (ONI’s) District Intelligence Office (DIO) in the Third Naval District sought assistance from an unlikely ally to help secure the waterfront: the Mob.
By using informants from organized crime families, which in this time period were referred to simply as “the underworld,” the DIO was able to secure the waterfront and the coastline around New York to ensure troops and supplies could move freely to Europe without being sabotaged.
Historically, the Underworld Project’s most well-known contribution to the war effort was the Italian underworld’s assistance in planning and executing Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily. Several agents within Haffenden’s F section of the DIO put together detailed maps with the help of Sicilian-born immigrants and contacted informants in Sicily who would play a crucial role in gathering intelligence in support of the operation.15 However, this might not have been possible if the underworld also had not helped secure the Port of New York in the early stages of the war.
Although there is not much documentation on the details of these operations, it is clear that underworld informants were a key part of Homefront security and intelligence gathering in the early stages of the war. Even if there are no confirmed reports of saboteurs being caught or supplies for German submarines being confiscated, ensuring that the Port of New York was secure for troops and supplies to continuously move to Europe was a vital step in ensuring the United States’ successful campaign against Nazi Germany in Europe.
(Excerpt) Read more at usni.org ...
There have been other not well documented stories that the Mob thought the Nazis were a bigger enemy than U.S. law enforcement. Some mobsters were of Jewish origin which had to be considered.
The one trait that separated the “families” from all the subsequent non-Italian crime groups: they loved America.
Bkmk
A strong possibility is “extra-judicial” apprehension and execution of spies and saboteurs .The Mob would not want the authorities to know the details and the authorities would have been fine not knowing .War is not always? fought “cleanly”.
They may have been criminals, but they were patriots.
It’s a colorful story. The Allies captured the Abwehr files after the war. There weren’t any Axis saboteurs on the docks, and certainly the communist dominated labor unions weren’t going to hinder shipping at this point in the war.
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