9. Mussolini’s Crusade Against the Mafia in Italy Helped the Mafia in America
To wreck the mafia, Mussolini selected an underling named Cesare Mori, who became known as “The Iron Prefect” for his toughness, and set him loose. For over a century, Mafiosi had intimidated civilians, strutting as scary tough guys. They discovered that soldiers were scarier and tougher than mustache-twirling thugs. Serendipitously for the American mafia, Mussolini’s crackdown on their peers in Italy forced many of them to flee. The push factor at home coincided with a pull factor in the US.
In America, Italian crime families were experiencing an unprecedented boom, and Italian Mafiosi fleeing Italy swelled the ranks of the American mafia just when their services were most needed. Back in the Old Country, it was not until WWII and the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy that the Camorra and Sicilian mafia were reborn, when the US Army used their remnants to help with the occupation. It was wartime, and the exigencies thereof called for using whatever was at hand to help win and save American lives. After what Mussolini and the fascists had done to them, Mafiosi were as committed anti-fascists as they come.
