Chapter Seventeen

A Shift in Enemies

Salvatore Giuliano was Sicilian gangster number one during the Allied occupation and after. His bandit life began on 2 September 1943 when he was still a teenager. He stole a sack of flour that he was going to sell on the black market when he was cornered by a Carabiniere. He was ordered to give up the flour but killed the policeman instead. He embarked on a life on the run – and would be accused of having killed seventy-three Carabinieri and twenty-seven other policemen by the end of his criminal career.

Giuliano’s family was not poor. His father had made his money as an emigrant to the United States where he worked in Minnesota. When he returned to Sicily, he bought some land and a house in Montelepre, a mountainous area not far from Palermo. As a bandit, Giuliano made this his realm and few passed through it without paying homage to him. He formed a gang with escaped prisoners from Monreale and proceeded to terrorise the countryside around Palermo. He extorted money and food from the landowners and gave some of it to the local peasants so they began to love and fear him – shielding him from the authorities.

Giuliano was fearless and in his first months as a bandit he showed no respect to the Mafia. One old Mafioso was found on the road to Castellammare del Golfo with his face smeared with cow dung and a note tied round his neck, saying ‘This is how Giuliano treats the Mafia.’

In the old days, the Mafia had controlled banditry in their region by making links with the bandits, planning operations and sharing the profits of their crimes. They offered protection to landowners from raids in return for a fee. But their power was diminished since the Fascist regime and the countryside in the war years was overrun by bandits operating beyond the reach of the Mafia. These armed bands, mentioned in numerous Allied reports of the time, were kidnapping prominent locals, attacking buses and trains, looting government stores, fighting with the Carabinieri and Italian Army.

That said, Giuliano was too dominant a personality in an area too close to the heart of the Mafia to remain for long outside their society. Sometime in 1944, he was contacted by Concetto Gallo, commander of the Mafia’s Voluntary Army for Sicilian Independence – Esercito Volontario Indipendenza Siciliana (EVIS). This armed force – consisting of several bandit groups – had the full backing of senior Separatist supporters and was intended to give military-style weight to their insurgency.

Gallo met with Giuliano at Bellolampo on the outskirts of Palermo and offered him the rank of colonel in EVIS. He promised that when the Separatists won independence, Giuliano could become head of the island’s police force. Giuliano was not even twenty when he had this meeting and was flattered by the attention of senior Mafiosi and Separatist leaders. At a subsequent meeting, Giuliano and his 100-strong unit were formerly incorporated into EVIS. A later Sicilian police report was explicit about Giuliano’s involvement with politics:

Giuliano and the Separatist leaders met at Ponte di Sagana in the presence of a number of well-armed bandits. They discussed tactical plans to get power in Sicily and stamp out Communism. Giuliano submitted a plan for an attack in the area of Monreale, Montelepre and Partinico and asked for 10 million lire to finance it. But the duke [of Carcaci] and Baron La Motta seemed rather puzzled. Another bandit suggested that the needed funds could be raised by kidnapping and blackmailing wealthy people. This suggestion was approved . . .

With Giuliano incorporated into their ranks, EVIS ambitions grew. Its leaders even considered a march on Palermo to capture the capital of the island. However, they were never more than a few hundred strong and their activities in early 1945 remained low-level raids, with handfuls of bandits attacking Carabinieri headquarters and looting ammunition dumps. This begged the question: having started an armed rebellion, did Separatist forces really have enough support throughout the island to carry on to victory? Would they ever be more than just nuisance bandits?

Rome kept a tight control on news about the Sicilian Separatist uprising from late 1944 to early 1945. It did not enter the international press until 1 February 1945 when veteran New York Times reporter Herbert L. Matthews broke the story with the headline ‘Sicily in throes of Civil Disorder’:

Not a word of this has gone to the outer world, because of the blackout on news that the Rome Government keeps over Sicilian disorders. Once it is over, there will be a carefully controlled statement whose accuracy will depend on political factors, but whose incomplete lack of correctness will also be due to the fact that it is impossible to get the true story of what happens.

Matthews was based in Palermo and did his best to give a summary of the major disturbances in Sicily from Palermo on 19 October 1944 to the rebellion in Ragusa and Agrigento in January 1945. ‘The Communists and Socialists in Rome like to blame this and other Sicilian troubles on the Fascists’, said Matthews. ‘There is only one good word to describe the accusation and that is nonsense.’ Instead, Matthews pointed the finger at the Separatists, led by Finocchiaro Aprile, and the Mafia:

The Mafia is one of the unknown factors in an extraordinarily complicated situation. In its upper brackets the Mafia is naturally separatist – first, because of its traditional links with the great landowning interests and, second, because it is to its advantage to have those politicians whom it chooses or backs under its control in Palermo rather than out of control in Rome.

As for the crime wave and the widespread banditry in the country, Matthews believed it was in effect a challenge to the authority of the Mafia:

One thing for which the Mafia will not stand in the long run is unorganised widespread crime such as is now occurring in the island. It must either absorb and control the present unruly elements or fight and destroy them. Unfortunately, what signs there are show that efforts are being made by the Mafiosi to gather in rather than to oppose the present delinquents.

It was a shrewd and accurate portrayal of the events and Matthews may have gained his information from Allied intelligence agencies based in Palermo. Indeed, the information may even have been leaked to the journalist to put some international pressure on the Italian government. A follow-up article by Matthews carried a threat to the Italian government, that unless it sorted out the situation, the Allies would intervene:

Sicilian separatists want the Allies to come back and re-occupy Sicily, and they have it in their power to force this issue. The movement for the ‘Independence of Sicily’ is Italy’s gravest national problem and Rome’s efforts to minimize it are not going to conjure it away.

This sounded very much like a warning from the Allies to the Italian prime minister. Matthews then compared the situation to that in India with the Muslims wanting a separate Pakistan. He believed it was an Allied problem as much as an Italian one. ‘Sicily was the first place we liberated in Europe and it is a good example of what disturbing forces liberation is setting free in this old world from which our own people came.’ He repeated the charge that ‘the Mafia, that peculiarly Sicilian institution which is almost a government to itself, is also deeply involved.’

Sicilian High Commissioner Salvatore Aldisio’s idea for defeating the widespread lawlessness in his island was the formation of a special battalion of Carabinieri, but the problem was that they seemed to be out-gunned from the very beginning. That the authorities still felt extremely nervous about the forces they faced was reflected in their security measures for the anniversary of the Sicilian Vespers held in Palermo on 31 March 1945. It was over-kill: armoured cars were placed at strategic points throughout the city; public safety agents, troops, and Carabinieri were stationed at all government buildings; complete infantry and alpine companies were positioned in different parts of the city; Carabinieri stood guard on rooftops near the Separatist headquarters; road-blocks were set up on routes leading to Palermo to prevent the possible entrance of trucks carrying armed Separatist followers. All this for an event that attracted only 200 Sicilians!

Finocchiaro Aprile hosted the evening and must have been satisfied by the security panic. Another Separatist leader, Lucio Tasca, gave a rousing speech. ‘I wish Allied observers would realise’, said Tasca, ‘that there will never be peace in the Mediterranean until Sicilian aspirations are guaranteed. Domination based on armed might will not change the desires of the people. We will defend our independence. Sicily’s hour is near.’

The authorities were embarrassed by their show of nervousness. Perhaps surprised and then encouraged by the lack of trouble at the event (plus that at the Separatist Congress held the following month), anti-Separatist elements took their turn to go on the offensive. An OSS report quoted both the Christian Democrat and Communist parties as asking the Italian government to take prompt disciplinary action against the Separatist Movement. In the streets of Palermo, this culminated in an assault on the headquarters of the Separatist party. A British Field Security officer described the action:

At 9.00hrs on 21 April [1945], a group of 200 small boys and students was observed proceeding down Via Liberta, Palermo, bearing the Italian flag, with paper pasted over the insignia of the House of Savoy. These boys, it was stated, were protesting against the cession of Trieste. On reaching the centre of the town they were joined by other groups until a crowd approaching two thousand was formed.

After milling around the streets, the crowd was escorted by Carabinieri and public safety agents towards the Separatist headquarters in Via Ruggero Settimo. They arrived about 11 o’clock. Inside the Separatist HQ were some forty young supporters. Some stood at the first-floor windows and exchanged insults with the crowd on the street. Suddenly, a shower of stones was thrown at the Separatist HQ and the protestors stormed inside. Fighting broke out inside the building while protestors hurled papers, chairs, and typewriters out of the upper windows. Separatist youths got the worst of the fighting and were carried out of the building.

Some of the Separatists [reported the Field Security officer] were successful in rescuing the Sicilian flag, with which they beat a retreat. This flag was replaced by the Italian flag, which flew from a first-storey window of the premises for the rest of the day. By this time most of the office material was out in the street. After the defeat of the Separatists, mounted CC.RR appeared on the scene and the street was cleared. Calm was restored by 12.00 hrs. No Allied personnel were involved.

The mob may have been originally protesting about keeping Trieste Italian, but their protests were quickly diverted against the Separatists. That this could happen in broad daylight without any intervention by the authorities shook Finocchiaro Aprile. Where were his armed forces? A local newspaper took this up. ‘It is not felt that this demonstration was a spontaneous outburst against Separatism by “the citizens of Palermo”,’ said the Giornale di Sicilia, ‘but rather an organised effort by the Italian government to deal with the embarrassment of Separatism in its own indirect way.’ ‘This demonstration’, said the British Field Security officer, ‘caught the Separatists off their guard and there were no responsible leaders of the movement in the HQ at the time of the incident. The weekend 21/22 April found them nursing their wounds and vowing vengeance.’

On the same day, Finocchiaro Aprile wrote a stinging letter to Admiral Stone, Chief of the Allied Commission in Rome. He blamed the authorities for the attack:

For the purpose of belittling the exceptional importance of the second congress of our Movement the Italian government organised a gang of one thousand criminals and schoolboys in a demonstration against our movement. Carabinieri and policemen destroyed our headquarters in Palermo. In the headquarters were only approximately twenty unarmed youths who were brutally assaulted and arrested. This ignominious act, contrary to Allied interest has deeply shocked the citizenry.

Finocchiaro Aprile promised a serious reaction, but what he really wanted – just when Allied troops were being withdrawn from the island – was to pitch the Allies against the Italian government. ‘As for myself ’, he said, ‘I renew the request that Sicily should be once again occupied by the Allies in order to prevent even more serious disorders.’

British Vice-Consul Manley believed the raid on their Palermo HQ plus the later closing of other offices across the island pushed the Separatists to a more sinister phase:

The subsequent closing of all the MIS [Movimento per l’Indipendenza della Sicilia] headquarters throughout Sicily drove the MIS underground. On account of this a number of the younger members were reported to have fled to the mountains and joined the bands in order to avoid arrest. Concetto Gallo a member of the MIS committee in Catania was one of them. This is another possible link between the MIS and the bandits and subsequently the EVIS.

Political rivals of the Separatists could sense weakness and began circling the party. The Separatists might have their so-called EVIS army of bandits but that only operated in the countryside. In the urban battle zone they were vulnerable.

In late April, Monarchists approached Don Calogero Vizzini for support. He declined their invitation, but such manoeuvring planted seeds of doubt in the heads of the Mafia leaders behind Finocchiaro Aprile. Following the failure of their armed insurrection to inflame the whole island, and the authorities brazen assault on their Palermo HQ, the Separatists were starting to look like losers. They certainly appeared weak and the Mafia could not risk their fearful reputation by continuing to back them. Should they persist with the Separatists or dump them?

Beyond the shores of Sicily, in the rest of Europe, world war was coming to an end. Adolf Hitler shot himself in his bunker deep beneath the ruined centre of Berlin on 30 April 1945. Two days before, he had heard about the humiliating end of his Fascist comrade Benito Mussolini. The circumstances probably convinced Hitler to commit suicide rather than face capture.

On 27 April, Mussolini was being driven north from his Fascist enclave to the Swiss border in a German convoy. He hoped to escape to the country that had given him refuge as a young political activist, but Italian partisans intercepted the convoy and found Il Duce hidden beneath a blanket in the back of a truck. He was wearing a German helmet and a Luftwaffe jacket and the Germans tried to explain away his presence by saying he was a drunken comrade. The partisans were not fooled and took Mussolini to a secluded mountain cottage. His mistress, Clara Petacci, and other Fascist prisoners were taken to the town hall at nearby Dongo.

US Sergeant Dan Polier, a correspondent for Yank magazine, spoke to two of the partisans who guarded the 62-year-old dictator during his last night alive. Mussolini was confident of his fate, they remembered:

‘I know my destiny. I shall be taken to San Donino prison in Como and then to San Vittore prison in Milan. [He had been imprisoned in both as a young left-wing agitator.] I shall be given a trial, and I will tell the world I have been betrayed nine times – the last time by Hitler.’

‘Why did you tell the people Germany would win the war?’ asked George Buffeli, one of the partisans.

‘My dear fellow’, said Mussolini, ‘you must know that Hitler’s Gestapo was so strong around me I could be alone only in bed.’

‘Do you realise now’, said Buffeli, ‘that you were allied with a madman?’

‘Hitler was a foolish man’, said Mussolini. ‘He should have known that it was impossible for one man to become master of the world. Every human force has a limit. A tree cannot grow to the sky.’

Mussolini shivered in the cold of the mountain cottage. A partisan offered him the Luftwaffe coat he had worn when he was captured.

‘Basta Tedeschi [Down with the Germans]’, growled Mussolini and pushed it away.

Later that night, Mussolini was joined by Petacci. His interpretation of his future was wrong. The next day, they were both given a brief trial by the partisans and at 4.10 p.m., without ceremony, they were shot dead. That night, the bodies were taken to Milan in a van and dumped in the Piazza Loreto – a place previously used to execute partisans. The bodies were beaten by the crowd and then strung up on an iron fence, upside down, outside a petrol station.

Hitler did not want to end up like that. Two days later, he shot himself and had his body burned. World War II ended in Europe on 8 May 1945.

On the same day, in New York, Lucky Luciano’s attorney, Moses Polakoff, filed a petition for executive clemency for his client. With the war over, Luciano wasn’t wasting any more time. He had delivered his side of the bargain and now he wanted out. The newspapers were pretty clear about what happened, as the New York Times reported:

Because Charles (Lucky Luciano) Lucania, serving a 30-to-50-year State prison term as a ‘vice king’, had aided the military authorities for two years in the preliminaries leading to the Sicily invasion by the Allies, his lawyer revealed yesterday, an application has been made to Governor Dewey, who prosecuted Luciano in 1936, for executive clemency. The application now is before the state Prison Parole Board.

Luciano’s lawyer at this hearing was Moses Polakoff and he declared that Luciano’s services were enlisted by a Major Murray Gurfein of Military Intelligence. Polakoff then told the court that Luciano had provided this information from his cell in Great Meadow prison in 1942 and that ‘many Sicilian-born Italians furnished information regarding the conditions in Sicily that was helpful in the armed forces’. A very straightforward and open account – and yet mystery and controversy remained around Luciano’s contribution to his country’s war effort for decades to come. This brief statement by Luciano’s attorney would only be amplified by later investigations.

By the late summer of 1945, the general situation in Sicily seemed little improved. The US Army Office of Communications Censorship intercepted a letter from a citizen of Catania, Enrico Sorrentino, written in August, and distributed copies to AFHQ and the British War Office.

Of course the price of petrol goes up [complained Sorrentino]. At present it is 150 lire and is still increasing. Things are different from Rome northwards. Our treatment is always the same, and therefore the Sicilian Separatist movement gains ground. Professor Canepa of our University, who headed the movement was killed in an incident with the public authorities and his successor has published a bellicose proclamation believing that the time for a rising is at hand. If this is so, blood will once more be shed on this tortured soil.

Sorrentino went on to paint a bleak picture of life in post-war Sicily:

Our country is a very sorry sight today. Firearms are plentiful and killings take place on the slightest pretext. Everyone takes justice into his own hand. In a court of assize, a partisan Carabiniere who was guarding a prisoner executed his own judgement by using his arms without waiting for that of the judges. And so it goes on everywhere, robberies, rapine, threatening letters, kidnappings, etc., are daily occurrences. The police make mass arrests; the prisons are crowded and within the prison walls there are rebellion, arson and other crimes.

In contrast to Sorrentino’s view of events, AFHQ felt the situation had calmed since the beginning of the year. A report from Lieutenant Colonel G. E. Monsell in the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, US Army, made in September, declared that the general situation in Sicily gave no indication of any revolutionary or anti-Allied activity. There was more concern about the Sicilian Communist party:

Although no reliable information has been received about Communist activities, undoubtedly the Italian Communist party is in close contact with the Sicilian Communist Party and attempting to extend its influence as in other regions.

According to Allied intelligence figures, membership of the Sicilian Communist party numbered 48,000 and the Socialists 29,000. The Separatists had 30,000 signed-up members, while the conservative Christian Democrats had 45,000. There was a distinct fault line between right and left in Sicily and Monsell considered this the main threat to stability. Elections were to be held in Sicily in 1946 and all parties were manoeuvring towards this. ‘The incidence of crime is said to be on the increase’, said Monsell, ‘possibly due to a combination of economic unrest and the turbulent Sicilian temperament but since June 45 no subversive activity or major incidents have been reported.’

As autumn in Sicily unfolded, the Italian authorities decided that the Separatists were sufficiently weakened by the events of previous months for them to make a final move against them. On 2 October 1945, leading Separatist politicians were arrested, including Finocchiaro Aprile, Andrea Varvaro and Francesco Restuccia. They were charged with plotting against the integrity and independence of the state and sent to the prison island of Ponza. It could have been a risky gamble by the government, provoking rioting on to the streets and armed uprising in the countryside, but the muted confrontations of previous months, from the Sicilian Vespers anniversary onwards, had suggested otherwise.

The majority of Palermo newspapers reacted positively to the news, welcoming the firm action taken by the government. The Orbis news agency said that most Sicilians received the news with calm and indifference. The Christian Democrats in their newspaper, Sicilia del Popolo, said they only supported the aspirations of the Separatists because they believed they had the support of the Allies. There were no riots in the streets. The government had tested the mood of the Sicilian population and got it right. The Mafia reacted to the arrests by shifting their allegiance away from Finocchiaro Aprile. They could see that he did not possess the power of the streets – there were no mass protests or strikes at his imprisonment – and now that the war was over the Allies were less interested in the Separatist cause.

As the Cold War era dawned, the Allies were more concerned about Soviet domination in Eastern Europe spreading to the Mediterranean. They wanted Sicily to be part of a strong, united and anti-Communist Italy. For the Allies, the Christian Democrats were looking the better game in town – and the majority of the Mafia were starting to agree. The Christian Democrats favoured regional autonomy and they declared their intention to concentrate on defeating Communism. To them, the Mafia and the Allies, this was the biggest enemy faced by Sicily – not the Italian government.

But there was a minority of the Mafia, led by Calogero Vizzini, who still believed in the revolutionary dimension of Separatism. Along with Lucio Tasca, they had contacts with Salvatore Giuliano and the other outlaws who formed the bandit army EVIS. They set their aims on continuing a guerrilla war against the authorities.

A Security Intelligence report for December 1945 described a major confrontation between the police and EVIS at San Mauro di Caltagirone in Catania. ‘The bandits had surrounded a country house’, said the report, ‘and were dressed in khaki uniforms and had German vehicles. They were using arms, and casualties, including one NCO killed, had been inflicted on the CCRR.’ In fact, the authorities had cornered Concetto Gallo, the commander of EVIS forces who had invited Giuliano to join him. Some 250 Carabinieri and 350 Italian soldiers fought 150 Separatist bandits for several hours. The government forces eventually broke the stalemate with a mortar barrage and captured Gallo.

EVIS might be broken in the east of the island, but Giuliano remained defiant in the west and it would take a much bigger operation – plus the involvement of the Mafia – to silence him.