The Mob versus the Nazis was an offer an Obama predecessor couldn't refuse.

THE WAR ON TERROR SPECTATOR
OPERATION UNDERWORLD


By Eric Dezenhall – From the September 2011 issue





Quentin Tarantino's darkly comic 2009 film, Inglourious Basterds, was rollicking Nazi vengeance porn, the core shtick being a handful of Jewish American soldiers wreaking havoc on Hitler, Goebbels, and their goose-stepping ilk. The movie was alternative history, of course, but the story of shtarkers, Jewish tough guys, going after Nazis has a basis in fact.

This is the theme of my new historical novel, The Devil Himself, which is about the very real collaboration between Jewish mob boss Meyer Lansky and U.S. Naval Intelligence.

I have known Meyer Lansky's family for years and had access to his personal recollections and private papers. Meyer's activities, sanctioned by the government as part of "Operation Underworld," included a Tarantinian mobilization of Jewish American mobsters against Nazi sympathizers and saboteurs, a campaign as cloaked in secrecy as SEAL Team Six's recent takedown of Osama bin Laden.

On that subject, my early admiration of President Obama's handling of bin Laden's killing lost steam when his administration began twisting itself into pretzels to convey that the terrorist's killing was done, uh, politely. Heaven forbid we hurt the feelings of the other homicidal maniacs that have Americans in their crosshairs.

As contemporary America contemplates how to deal with its enemies, it is worth looking at what the wartime administration of another liberal Democrat did when faced with foreign terrorists.

OPERATION UNDERWORLD began shortly after Pearl Harbor, when the cruise shipNormandie caught fire and capsized at Pier 88 in Manhattan in early February, 1942. TheNormandie, the largest luxury liner in the world, was seized by the U.S. after France fell to the Nazis. It was being retrofitted for U.S. troop deployment when it was destroyed.

Many blamed the ship's destruction on Nazi sabotage. In retrospect, it probably wasn't, but at the time it was a reasonable assumption. The German American Bund had been a thriving pro-Nazi advocacy group in New York before the war. German U-boats were destroying U.S. ships in the North Atlantic at such a successful clip that Admiral Karl Dönitz dubbed his campaign the Third Reich's "Happy Time." More American sailors were killed under this initiative than died at Pearl Harbor.

Navy intelligence swarmed the New York docks to solicit the cooperation of the longshoremen to ferret out German spies. They were heartily rebuffed. The operating theory about the Navy's cold reception was that the largely Italian dock workers may have been loyal to Hitler's partner in mayhem, Italy's Mussolini. While such an allegiance may have been the case with some of the stevedores, there was a better explanation: The men who worked the docks were averse by nature and culture to help out any authorities.

Gravely concerned, the Navy sought the advice of New York law enforcement. Prosecutors conceded that, yes, the mob-controlled longshoremen were a tough lot, but not all mobsters were knuckle-dragging simians--especially ones whose Eastern European Jewish landsmen were being rounded up by Hitler.

Indeed, Meyer Lansky had tried to enlist in the army after Pearl Harbor, but was rejected because of his age, just shy of 40, and his height, 5' 4" in socks. Other Jewish mobsters had better luck. One of Meyer's men, Doc Stacher of Newark, served in the Army. Cleveland boss Moe Dalitz entered the Army a private and came out a captain. Minneapolis killer Davie Berman and Chicago's Charlie Barron were rebuffed, but enlisted in the Canadian army using fake names.

A meeting was arranged between Commander Charles Radcliffe Haffenden of the Third Naval District and Meyer Lansky at Longchamps restaurant. Haffenden was stunned when the diminutive mobster introduced himself, donning a conservative business suit, looking like a cross between an accountant from Arthur Andersen and a violin instructor. His eyes, hard and black, told a different story.

Haffenden's pitch was simple: The Navy understood that the mafia controlled the waterfront, Nazi sabotage was suspected in the Normandie fire, German U-boats were likely getting information from somebody on the docks, and the longshoremen weren't cooperating. Could Meyer's men be of any assistance?

Meyer acknowledged he had been giving Bund members the business for years. With the help of men like his childhood friend, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, cutthroats like Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, Allie "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum, and Seymour "Blue Jaw" Magoon, Jewish racketeers had been breaking up Bund rallies in the Yorkville section of Manhattan using guns, knives, and baseball bats. The mob hastened the Bund's demise by introducing mortal risks to its leadership.

Meyer clarified for Haffenden that there was no such thing as the mafia (heh), that he was a simple investor and music distributor (uh huh), but that he'd help because "it's patriotism."

He added that there was a man who was greatly respected by the Italian toughs on the waterfront who might be able to assist. The good news was that this man was Meyer's old friend. The bad news was that this friend was doing a 30- to 50-year prison sentence in an upstate New York prison known as "Siberia."

Charles "Lucky" Luciano had been convicted of running prostitution rackets six years earlier. After Meyer advised Haffenden that one shouldn't approach a Sicilian expecting something for nothing, a bewildered Luciano was moved in the dead of night from the inclement Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, to the more hospitable Great Meadow Prison in Comstock.

Shortly after his arrival, Luciano was escorted into the warden's office where he was greeted by Meyer and his attorney Moses Polakoff. The men had brought the overjoyed Luciano Italian and Jewish delicacies from Manhattan.

Luciano agreed to help. He ordered his capos, who were permitted to visit him, to cooperate with the Navy. Of course, he wanted something in return for his cooperation: his freedom. Haffenden agreed to do his best.

IN THE SUMMER of 1942, eight Nazi saboteurs were captured soon after they came ashore via U-boat near Amagansett, Long Island, and Jacksonville, Florida. They had brought with them lots of cash, explosives, and plans to blow up American defense plants, bridges, railways, and Jewish-owned department stores.

These saboteurs weren't the Third Reich's first string. Their leader turned himself in to J. Edgar Hoover. Some of the others were captured when mob-controlled union members employed at New York hotels reported them to naval intelligence.

For his part, President Roosevelt, a nighttime reader of gangster novels, was ruthless when it came to dealing with the Nazis. He wanted to execute all of the saboteurs without as much as a public utterance. Instead, two of the saboteurs were given long prison sentences and six of them, after one of the swiftest Supreme Court reviews in history, were executed at the District of Columbia jail and buried in a nearby potter's field. Roosevelt even joked about the executions while mixing drinks at the presidential retreat, Shangri-La.

In one of the stranger coincidences in history, FDR was very close to the powerful journalist Walter Winchell, who was, in turn, a friend and neighbor of Meyer Lansky in the Majestic House apartments on Central Park West. Winchell was an unrepentant propagandist for the American cause, and he was unafraid to work with gangsters to publicize their beat-downs of Nazi sympathizers.

While history is clear about Roosevelt's active engagement in wartime espionage, the substance of any FDR-Winchell-Lansky interaction remains unknown. Still, imagine the mere spectacle of such a dotted-line triangle given today's transparency fetish.

Domestic sabotage was a non-issue for the remainder of the war. This was due to factors besides Operation Underworld, of course, but German spies mustn't have found the New York waterfront hospitable with the likes of Bugsy, Lepke, & Company roaming Lower Manhattan.

Meyer and Luciano's services didn't stop here. When it came time to invade Sicily, Commander Haffenden again brought in the boys. They provided naval intelligence with mafia contacts in Sicily that were instrumental in both the initial landing (courtesy of maps provided by local fishermen) and in locating strategic Nazi strongholds. It wasn't all about patriotism: Mussolini had cracked down hard on the Sicilian mafia and homegrown gangsters wanted him out.

For his service, Luciano's prison sentence was commuted by New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, who had been the very prosecutor to put him behind bars. Luciano, who never bothered to become an American citizen, was deported to Italy, never to regain his position atop the American underworld.

To be sure, mafiaphiles have exaggerated the contributions of racketeers to the war effort. Especially preposterous is the folklore that has Luciano storming onto Sicilian beaches beside Patton waving a yellow flag emblazoned with the letter L to liberate the countryside.

It's hard to imagine either the president or the media in the age of WikiLeaks tapping the Sopranos to whack al Qaeda. Both the successful conquest of Sicily -- which, nevertheless, included the Allied air bombing of our own troops -- and the initial slaughter at Normandy would have been declared "quagmires" by today's reporters. Contrast this with American journalists during FDR's day, who barely reported Hitler's demoralizing "Happy Time" duck shoot against U.S. vessels.

Somewhere along the line, being seen as apologetic and gentle has trumped other priorities in international affairs. Envision FDR or Truman offering frantic assurances that Hitler's body reached its final resting place in strict accordance with Waffen SS tradition. Or that the Hiroshima bomb incinerated tens of thousands humanely.

Still, at least one thing about Operation Underworld would translate to 21st-century Washington, namely the fate of the Navy officer who ran the program. Commander Haffenden was shipped to Iwo Jima in the hope he wouldn't make it back. He did, but was severely injured. His reputation was dragged through sea clutter when word of Operation Underworld leaked and became the subject of investigations. Positioned as a rogue agent, Haffenden turned to alcohol and became a Dictaphone salesman, dying on Christmas Eve, 1952.

MEYER LANSKSY'S best days were ahead of him. He attempted to clean up his fortune in Las Vegas and Havana, where he was the czar of Cuba's legal gaming and resort industries. When Havana fell to Castro, he lost his most lucrative legal holdings. His every move shadowed by law enforcement, Meyer attempted to gain Israeli citizenship under that country's Law of Return, but was considered a liability and was forced to return to Miami Beach, where he died in 1983 of natural causes--in bed, with his shoes off.

As I portray in The Devil Himself, Meyer was intensely proud of his service in World War II. He was motivated by an immigrant's desire to prove he was a "real American," a concept that is hard to imagine in today's climate, in which such a wish would be greeted by the dominant media culture with an eye roll.

Unlike his partner Luciano, Meyer was an American citizen who received his Certificate of Naturalization after the war. He was so enthralled with his Navy collaboration that he sent his son Paul to West Point.

The deranged mob boss Albert Anastasia was said to have told Meyer, "Someday, my boy's gonna run the Brooklyn waterfront." Meyer responded, "That's nice. My son works at NASA."

He wasn't kidding. Paul Lansky was an engineer on the Apollo space program and one of the first military advisors in Vietnam.

The value of Operation Underworld can be legitimately debated. What cannot is how far our leaders were once willing to go to defeat our country's enemies. There was a time--bada bing!--when even a mobster's contribution was an offer we couldn't refuse. 

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“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address

Franklin D. Roosevelt had campaigned against Herbert Hoover in the 1932 presidential election by saying as little as possible about what he might do if elected. Through even the closest working relationships, none of the president-elect’s most intimate associates felt they knew him well, with the exception perhaps of his wife, Eleanor. The affable, witty Roosevelt used his great personal charm to keep most people at a distance. In campaign speeches, he favored a buoyant, optimistic, gently paternal tone spiced with humor. But his first inaugural address took on an unusually solemn, religious quality. And for good reason—by 1933 the depression had reached its depth. Roosevelt’s first inaugural address outlined in broad terms how he hoped to govern and reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned “only material things.”



Please note that the audio is an excerpt from the full address.

Listen to Audio: (Youtube:http://youtu.be/ObLXVcWiJPg )

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.

Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.

Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.

There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.

Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.

With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.

Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.

We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.

In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come.

Source: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938), 11–16.

Source: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/

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Note: This segment is not covered on Youtube video/audio link provided above.
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Nothing happens by accident

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." 
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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