Cosa Nostra News

July 2018 marked the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Sicily, aka Operation Husky... American troops advancing to Messina, 1943. The summer 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily was an unmitigated success, what historians term as one of World War II's major turning points. After defeating Italy and Germany in the North African Campaign (November 8, 1942-May 13, 1943) of World War II (1939-45), the United States and Great Britain, the two leading Allied powers, decided to liberate Italy, to accomplish the vital goals of removing Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, securing the central Mediterranean, and destroying the Axis bulkhead and driving the remaining Italian and German forces to either surrender or retreat. The Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943. After 38 days of fighting, the U.S. and Great Britain drove German and Italian troops off of Sicily and prepared to continue to assault them on the Italian mainland. Setting the stage for Operation Husky...

Following is an episode of a1950s radio news program called "The Nation's Nightmare," which spotlights the Mafia's then-growing infiltration of the New York and New Jersey waterfronts. Narrated by veteran correspondent Bill Downs, one of the so-called (Edward R.) Morrow's Boys , he sounds the alarm about "the greatest concentration of Mafia power in the world." And he does it using that  tinny, clipped 1950s tone called Transatlantic speech , a specific speaking style taught to broadcasters in the mass media's early days in an attempt to offset America's thousands of rich regional dialects. Albert Anastasia, "Socks" Lanza, and just about every mobster of notoriety in the 1950s is mentioned in the broadcast, which also describes everything from the dockworker "shakeup" in the mornings to how various mobsters came to dominate certain sections of the ports, as well as related unions. This particular episod...

Click on image to see on Amazon Yes, Montagna part two and a lot of other things in the works -- just saw this, thought it might interest some of you. Good historical Mafia fiction is hard to find.... "War makes patriots of us all — even Mafia capos. Albert Anastasia, a big deal in Murder Inc., enlisted in the Army. Joseph (Socks) Lanza, who controlled the rackets at the Fulton Fish Market, let naval officers work undercover on his fleet. And Long Island mobsters were said to have helped capture saboteurs who came ashore from a German submarine. These and other real-life gangsters appear in THE LETTER WRITER (Knopf, $26.95), Dan Fesperman’s dynamic novel set in New York during World War II." The New York Times today includes a story about this fictional book that takes place during WW2 and includes real Mafia figures among its characters. Among them is Meyer Lansky, "who arranged for Mafia dons to coordinate their war efforts with Frank Hogan, the New York...