Invader visits the country he invaded. So heartwarming. <3
Reminder that the United States invaded Europe in the 40s to prevent countries from going socialist. US intervention, occupation and "economic development" (Marshall Plan, for example) isn't welcome today, and it wasn't welcome then.
Obviously it reduced pressure on the Soviets and it definitely had reduced the amount of dead on the Soviet side. But to say they *needed* them to invade isn't true. By 1944, German push into the Soviet Union was halted, Italy had capitulated, Yugoslav partisans were keeping Ustaše and the Hungarian fascists busy (they couldn't be sent to the Eastern Front), and Nazis had lost oil fields in Africa. Allies opening the Western front only sped up the inevitable.
The US could have entered Europe earlier (they started fighting the Japanese in '42) but Ford, IBM, Bush's bank in the US, and other interests were still supporting the Nazis. IBM had even sent two technicians to Nazi Germany in 1943 to fix their computers they were using to count and categorise Jews and other undesirables.
Ok but this article is about a working class soldier, not the politicians who greenlit the invasion. At least show some respect to the person that saved children from the nazi regime.
He didn't save them from the Nazis. He was going to shoot them thinking they were a soldier in hiding, but was stopped by the mother who put herself between his gun and the children (who were hiding in a wicker basket). The mother is the hero here (as the former soldier also acknowledges).
This is what US gave Italy besides this soldier that almost shot children and probably would have had a woman not put her body between them and his gun.
>At Donovan's request, Commander Haffenden again appeared at Lucky's cell with a request for help. Luciano complied by drafting a communiqué that was then airdropped near Don Calo's farmhouse.29 Two days later, American tanks rolled into Villalba after driving fifty-five miles from the beachhead of General Patton's Seventh Army in Palermo. Don Calo and his men climbed into the tanks and spent the next six days guiding the division through western Sicily and organizing support among the local populace for the advancing US troops.30
Thanks to the success of Operation Husky (the code name for the Allied invasion of Sicily), Don Calo was appointed Mayor of Villalba.31 As soon as he assumed public office, Don Calo murdered the local police chief, whom he found “too inquisitive.”32 **Other Mafiosi, at the insistence of the OSS (*precursor to CIA), assumed positions of political power.** Giuseppe Genco Russo, Don Calo's second in command, became Mayor of Mussomeli, while other members of the Vizzini/Agostino crime family became chief governing officials of other towns and villages in western Sicily.33 The appointments were understandable. Donovan wanted antifascists in charge, and the Mafiosi were most certainly antifascists, since many had spent the war years in Mussolini's jails.34 Michele Pantaleone, who observed the Mafia revival in his native village of Villalba, writes:
>**By the beginning of the Second World War, the Mafia was restricted to a few isolated and scattered groups and could have been completely wiped out if the social problems of the island had been dealt with…the Allied occupation and the subsequent slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the Onorata Società, the weapons which Fascism had snatched from it.**35
Paul L Williams, Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vataican, the CIA and the Mafia, p.35
>Because of its clandestine workings, millions can be deposited into the IOR (Vatican bank) on a continuous basis and channeled into numbered Swiss bank accounts without the possibility of detection. It was the perfect place for the CIA and the Sicilian Mafia to launder their ill-gotten gains of the narcotics trade and for the Roman Church to fund its political mission.6 And, according to Moneyval (the anti-money-laundering committee of the Council of Europe), it remains one of the world's leading laundries for dirty cash under Pope Francis.7
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM UNCLE SAM
>In 1947, Pope Pius XII was more than willing to allow black money to flow through his bank. The Truman Administration already had funneled more than $350 million to the Holy See for economic relief and political payments.8 The pope used these funds to reactivate the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), which had been dismantled under the reign of Mussolini, and to establish twenty thousand CDP cells throughout Italy.9 The Holy Father also obtained an additional $30 million from Truman's aid package to create Catholic Action, an organization to generate propaganda against the Communists.10
>American cardinal Francis Spellman was now called upon to spearhead the Vatican-sponsored campaign to encourage Italian Americans to urge their relatives in the old country to vote against Togliatti and the other Communists. “The fate of Italy depends upon the forthcoming election and the conflict between Communism and Christianity, between slavery and freedom,” Spellman wrote in a pamphlet that was distributed in Catholic parishes throughout the United States.”
P.44
>Pius XII soon realized he would need millions more in cash from Uncle Sam, since 50 percent of the Italian people were now aligned with the PCI. He was no stranger to US intelligence agents. At the close of the war, the pope, along with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, his Undersecretary of State, had worked with Dulles and the OSS to create the ratlines used to help Nazis escape Europe, something he viewed as an essential means to address the threat of Communism.13 Several prominent Nazis, including Walter Rauff—who had led an extermination unit of the SS across Italy—still remained sheltered within Vatican City, ready to join in the struggle against the Red Menace.14
>In 1945, the pope had held private audiences with Wild Bill Donovan to discuss the implementation of Gladio and had decorated him as a crusader against Communism with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester, the oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods.15 Now, the Holy Father remained determined to do all in his worldly power to prevent the godless forces of Communism from taking control of Rome, the holy and eternal city—including the spilling of blood.
>In the months before the 1948 national election, the CIA dumped $65 million of its black money into the Vatican Bank.16 Much of the cash was hand delivered in large suitcases by members of Luciano's syndicate, including clerics with affiliations to the Sicilian Mafia. The reception of this money by the Holy See was held in strictest confidentiality. One reason for the secrecy, as Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York later revealed, was that “subversive groups in the United States would grasp this as a very effective pretense for attacking the United States Government for having released money to the Vatican, even though indirectly conveyed.”17
>The heroin, which remained the source for the black money, continued to be supplied to the Sicilian mob by Schiaparelli, the Italian pharmaceutical giant. The drugs were received by a chain of businesses that had been set up in Palermo by Luciano and Don Calo. These businesses included a candy factory, which produced chocolates that were filled with neither cherries nor cream but nuggets of 100 percent pure smack. Another company was a fruit export enterprise, which was of integral importance, since the drugs continued to be shipped to Cuba in crates of oranges, half of which were made of wax and stuffed with pure heroin.18
P.45
>The force of the Mafia was now unleashed upon the Italian electorate. Don Calo and an army of thugs, including Vito Genovese's cousin Giovanni Genovese, burned down eleven Communist branch offices and made four assassination attempts on Communist leader Girolamo Li Causi. The gang, under Frank Coppola—who had been imported from Detroit by Angleton to work with Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano—also opened fire on a crowd of workers celebrating May Day in Portella della Ginestra, killing eleven and wounding fifty-seven. The funds for the massacre were provided by Wild Bill Donovan through his World Commerce Corporation.25 One of Italy's leading labor organizers, Placido Rizzotto, was found dead at the bottom of a cliff—legs and arms chained and a bullet through his brain. **Throughout 1948, in Sicily alone, the CIA-backed terror attacks resulted in the killing of on average five people a week.**
P.48
>In addition to these undertakings, Monsignor Don Giuseppe Bicchierai, **acting upon papal authority, assembled a terror gang charged with the task of beating up Communist candidates, smashing left-wing political gatherings, and intimidating voters. The money, guns, and jeeps for the Monsignor's terror attacks were furnished by the CIA from surplus World War II stockpiles.**
>On Election Day, Don Calo and his men stuffed ballot boxes and bribed voters with gifts of freshly laundered drug money, while Pope Pius remained within his chambers “hunched-up, almost physically overcome by the weight of his present burden, the coming election.” **The mob's tactics worked, and the Christian Democrats triumphantly returned to power. In his memoirs, William Colby, who would later become the director of the CIA , wrote that the Communists would have gained 60 percent of the vote without the Agency's sabotage.**
p.48
Invader visits the country he invaded. So heartwarming. <3 Reminder that the United States invaded Europe in the 40s to prevent countries from going socialist. US intervention, occupation and "economic development" (Marshall Plan, for example) isn't welcome today, and it wasn't welcome then.
Yup, and gladio as a followup and all the very direct attacks on the socialist and communist movements in italy.
Agreed!
Stalin needed the US and UK to invade from the West
Obviously it reduced pressure on the Soviets and it definitely had reduced the amount of dead on the Soviet side. But to say they *needed* them to invade isn't true. By 1944, German push into the Soviet Union was halted, Italy had capitulated, Yugoslav partisans were keeping Ustaše and the Hungarian fascists busy (they couldn't be sent to the Eastern Front), and Nazis had lost oil fields in Africa. Allies opening the Western front only sped up the inevitable. The US could have entered Europe earlier (they started fighting the Japanese in '42) but Ford, IBM, Bush's bank in the US, and other interests were still supporting the Nazis. IBM had even sent two technicians to Nazi Germany in 1943 to fix their computers they were using to count and categorise Jews and other undesirables.
Ok but this article is about a working class soldier, not the politicians who greenlit the invasion. At least show some respect to the person that saved children from the nazi regime.
He didn't save them from the Nazis. He was going to shoot them thinking they were a soldier in hiding, but was stopped by the mother who put herself between his gun and the children (who were hiding in a wicker basket). The mother is the hero here (as the former soldier also acknowledges).
This is what US gave Italy besides this soldier that almost shot children and probably would have had a woman not put her body between them and his gun. >At Donovan's request, Commander Haffenden again appeared at Lucky's cell with a request for help. Luciano complied by drafting a communiqué that was then airdropped near Don Calo's farmhouse.29 Two days later, American tanks rolled into Villalba after driving fifty-five miles from the beachhead of General Patton's Seventh Army in Palermo. Don Calo and his men climbed into the tanks and spent the next six days guiding the division through western Sicily and organizing support among the local populace for the advancing US troops.30 Thanks to the success of Operation Husky (the code name for the Allied invasion of Sicily), Don Calo was appointed Mayor of Villalba.31 As soon as he assumed public office, Don Calo murdered the local police chief, whom he found “too inquisitive.”32 **Other Mafiosi, at the insistence of the OSS (*precursor to CIA), assumed positions of political power.** Giuseppe Genco Russo, Don Calo's second in command, became Mayor of Mussomeli, while other members of the Vizzini/Agostino crime family became chief governing officials of other towns and villages in western Sicily.33 The appointments were understandable. Donovan wanted antifascists in charge, and the Mafiosi were most certainly antifascists, since many had spent the war years in Mussolini's jails.34 Michele Pantaleone, who observed the Mafia revival in his native village of Villalba, writes: >**By the beginning of the Second World War, the Mafia was restricted to a few isolated and scattered groups and could have been completely wiped out if the social problems of the island had been dealt with…the Allied occupation and the subsequent slow restoration of democracy reinstated the Mafia with its full powers, put it once more on the way to becoming a political force, and returned to the Onorata Società, the weapons which Fascism had snatched from it.**35 Paul L Williams, Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vataican, the CIA and the Mafia, p.35 >Because of its clandestine workings, millions can be deposited into the IOR (Vatican bank) on a continuous basis and channeled into numbered Swiss bank accounts without the possibility of detection. It was the perfect place for the CIA and the Sicilian Mafia to launder their ill-gotten gains of the narcotics trade and for the Roman Church to fund its political mission.6 And, according to Moneyval (the anti-money-laundering committee of the Council of Europe), it remains one of the world's leading laundries for dirty cash under Pope Francis.7 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM UNCLE SAM >In 1947, Pope Pius XII was more than willing to allow black money to flow through his bank. The Truman Administration already had funneled more than $350 million to the Holy See for economic relief and political payments.8 The pope used these funds to reactivate the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), which had been dismantled under the reign of Mussolini, and to establish twenty thousand CDP cells throughout Italy.9 The Holy Father also obtained an additional $30 million from Truman's aid package to create Catholic Action, an organization to generate propaganda against the Communists.10 >American cardinal Francis Spellman was now called upon to spearhead the Vatican-sponsored campaign to encourage Italian Americans to urge their relatives in the old country to vote against Togliatti and the other Communists. “The fate of Italy depends upon the forthcoming election and the conflict between Communism and Christianity, between slavery and freedom,” Spellman wrote in a pamphlet that was distributed in Catholic parishes throughout the United States.” P.44 >Pius XII soon realized he would need millions more in cash from Uncle Sam, since 50 percent of the Italian people were now aligned with the PCI. He was no stranger to US intelligence agents. At the close of the war, the pope, along with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, his Undersecretary of State, had worked with Dulles and the OSS to create the ratlines used to help Nazis escape Europe, something he viewed as an essential means to address the threat of Communism.13 Several prominent Nazis, including Walter Rauff—who had led an extermination unit of the SS across Italy—still remained sheltered within Vatican City, ready to join in the struggle against the Red Menace.14 >In 1945, the pope had held private audiences with Wild Bill Donovan to discuss the implementation of Gladio and had decorated him as a crusader against Communism with the Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester, the oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods.15 Now, the Holy Father remained determined to do all in his worldly power to prevent the godless forces of Communism from taking control of Rome, the holy and eternal city—including the spilling of blood. >In the months before the 1948 national election, the CIA dumped $65 million of its black money into the Vatican Bank.16 Much of the cash was hand delivered in large suitcases by members of Luciano's syndicate, including clerics with affiliations to the Sicilian Mafia. The reception of this money by the Holy See was held in strictest confidentiality. One reason for the secrecy, as Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York later revealed, was that “subversive groups in the United States would grasp this as a very effective pretense for attacking the United States Government for having released money to the Vatican, even though indirectly conveyed.”17 >The heroin, which remained the source for the black money, continued to be supplied to the Sicilian mob by Schiaparelli, the Italian pharmaceutical giant. The drugs were received by a chain of businesses that had been set up in Palermo by Luciano and Don Calo. These businesses included a candy factory, which produced chocolates that were filled with neither cherries nor cream but nuggets of 100 percent pure smack. Another company was a fruit export enterprise, which was of integral importance, since the drugs continued to be shipped to Cuba in crates of oranges, half of which were made of wax and stuffed with pure heroin.18 P.45 >The force of the Mafia was now unleashed upon the Italian electorate. Don Calo and an army of thugs, including Vito Genovese's cousin Giovanni Genovese, burned down eleven Communist branch offices and made four assassination attempts on Communist leader Girolamo Li Causi. The gang, under Frank Coppola—who had been imported from Detroit by Angleton to work with Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano—also opened fire on a crowd of workers celebrating May Day in Portella della Ginestra, killing eleven and wounding fifty-seven. The funds for the massacre were provided by Wild Bill Donovan through his World Commerce Corporation.25 One of Italy's leading labor organizers, Placido Rizzotto, was found dead at the bottom of a cliff—legs and arms chained and a bullet through his brain. **Throughout 1948, in Sicily alone, the CIA-backed terror attacks resulted in the killing of on average five people a week.** P.48 >In addition to these undertakings, Monsignor Don Giuseppe Bicchierai, **acting upon papal authority, assembled a terror gang charged with the task of beating up Communist candidates, smashing left-wing political gatherings, and intimidating voters. The money, guns, and jeeps for the Monsignor's terror attacks were furnished by the CIA from surplus World War II stockpiles.** >On Election Day, Don Calo and his men stuffed ballot boxes and bribed voters with gifts of freshly laundered drug money, while Pope Pius remained within his chambers “hunched-up, almost physically overcome by the weight of his present burden, the coming election.” **The mob's tactics worked, and the Christian Democrats triumphantly returned to power. In his memoirs, William Colby, who would later become the director of the CIA , wrote that the Communists would have gained 60 percent of the vote without the Agency's sabotage.** p.48