After the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, the United States was on edge. So when it seemed like spies for the Nazis and Mussolini were operating along the harbour in New York, the government decided that something had to be done. So they turned to an unlikely wartime ally: the Italian Mafia.

As Podcast host Marc Fennell (Stuff the British Stole, Mastermind) discovers, the clandestine coalition did help change the outcome of World War 2, but labour and crime historian Matt Black questions who really wins when the US government forms secret deals with mobsters and murderers.

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America’s Secret Pact with the Mafia