Shortly after his rise to power in Italy in 1922, Benito Mussolini launched an all-out war against the Mafia in Sicily. As a result, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 young mafiosi fled for America, where they provided fresh manpower for the old-line Mafia gangs. Many were happy to go, attracted by the huge monies that could be obtained in the bootlegging rackets.
Sicily’s most important Mafia leader, called by some observers “the boss of bosses,” Don Vito Cascio Ferro, masterminded the escape routes on what became known as “the Mussolini Shuttle.” The northern route called for smuggling the emigrant fugitives into Marseilles from where they were booked passage either directly to New York or to Canada, from where they slipped into the United States via Buffalo or Detroit. A southern route meant slipping out of Sicily to Tunis, thence to Cuba and on to Miami, Tampa, Norfolk or New Orleans.
Most of these emigrants owed allegiance to Don Vito and were expected to aid his obvious push to take over much of the Italian criminal activities in the United States. However, Don Vito himself was imprisoned by Mussolini in 1929 and died in 1932, leaving these erstwhile gangsters free to join various contending factions.
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Most joined the Young Turks under the more Americanized gangsters such as Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello and would in time take part in the destruction of the old-line mafiosi or Mustache Pete elements, who had tried to rule the U.S. underworld according to the traditions of the Sicilian Mafia.
In that sense Mussolini did much to foster organized crime in America, a result Il Duce probably saw as rather amusing. However, Mussolini’s campaign against gangsters cost him much support among Americans of Italian descent who viewed the new criminal migrations as producing more crime in their communities and so stirring fresh anti-Italian feelings among the general population.
