War of Castellammarese

The war of Castellammarese is the name given to the fight between two clans of the Cosa Nostra installed with New York dominating the crime in New York, in 1930 and 1931. It resulted a transformation from it from the North-American criminal landscape, the order of the traditional sicilian gangsters being replaced by a new generation which was going to create the Syndicat of the crime (or Commission).

The origin of the conflict

The war of Castellamarese was born, at one period when the Prohibition doped the incomes of the traffickers, of the will of two sicilian godfathers (originating in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily) to reign without division on the organized crime with New York, in 1930-1931,

One of the two clans was directed by Salvatore Maranzano, born in 1868. This Sicilian fascinated by Jules César and with very traditional manners, had been sent in America in 1918 by the powerful godfather of Castellammare del Golfo (close to Palermo), gift Vito Cascio Ferro, whose project was to build a transatlantic gangster empire. These projects had been opposed by the continuations of the lieutenant of police force Joseph Petrosimo which forced it to leave the American territory (before being assassinated at the time of an investigation in Sicily in 1909), then by Mussolini, which made it imprison in 1929. The team of Maranzano included/understood other sicilian defectors , such as Joseph Bonanno and Joseph Profaci, future godfathers of the one of the five New Yorkean families (see following chapters). The opposing clan was that of Joe Masseria known as the Boss , born in 1879, immigrant in 1903 and heir to the Morello family in 1920, after a series of assassinations. Opened with nonSicilian, its team included in particular Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Willie Moretti, Joe Adonis, and Frank Costello.

The elimination of Masseria

The competition between the two factions was exacerbated, at the end of the years 1920, by frequent steerings by one of alcohol convoys intended for the other. The war was started in February 1930, when Joe Masseria made carry out Tom Reina, a caïd who thought of making allegiance with Maranzano, in order to seize sound " entreprise" of racket of the deliverymen of ice (an important trade at one time when the refrigerators did not exist). Men of Tom Reina, whose Gaetano Gagliano and Tommy Lucchese (which became them also chiefs of a New Yorkean family), passed in the camp of Maranzano, after having killed the substitute of Reina placed by Masseria, certain Pinzolo, considered by the gangsters as a " guignol". After several tens of murder on both sides on all the American territory, the young generation was frightened by this conflict without exit. Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese organized the murder of their own owner, Joe Masseria, in the restaurant Nuova Villa Tammaro with Coney Island, on April 15th 1931. At the end of a meal with Luciano, Masseria was cut down by Genovese, Bugsy Siegel, Albert Anastasia and Joe Adonis.

Single fact in the history of the organized crime, Salvatore Maranzano then became the single chief of the Maffia Sicilian or Cosa Nostra (this term, meaning " our chose" would have appeared at that time) in the United States. It took the title of capo di tutti capi (chief of all the chiefs), according to the hierarchy inspired of the Roman legions into force in the Maffia in Sicily (chief, assistant manager, capo or captain and soldiers). Maranzano was thus with the head of an army of 600 soldiers on the territory of the the United States. It named the chiefs of the five families of New York: Lucky Luciano (future Genovese family), Joe Profaci (future Colombo family), Gaetano Gagliano (future Lucchese family), Joseph Bonanno, and Vincent Mangano (future Gambino family). This organization is always into force today.

The elimination of Maranzano

The reign of Maranzano was short. Its immoderate taste for the tradition and its Antisémitisme displeased with the young ambitious gangsters carried out by Lucky Luciano, feeling more American that Siciliens and wishing to work with Jewish comparses such as Meyer Lansky or Bugsy Siegel. Moreover, Luciano had had wind of the project of Maranzano to make it assassinate, him, like Vito Genovese and Al Capone, by the hired killer Irish, Vincent " Mad Dog" Coll In September 1931, Lucky Luciano thus took the initiative, with the approval of its associates, and sent a team of Jewish gangsters carried out by Bo Weinberg (lieutenant of Dutch Schultz), disguised in tax officials, to cut the throat of it in its own office. Between 40 and 90 of its men were killed the same day (according to certain specialists, this episode would be a legend). This évênement " was called; the sicilian Vespers " , in reference to the massacre of the Angevins in 1282 with Palermo.

The war of Castellamarese ended in the catch to be able of a generation of gangster to the style much more Américanisé and detached of the traditional values. Lucky Luciano, which had projected the elimination of both boss with his friend and adviser Meyer Lansky, seized in fact the power of the organized crime. This one was reorganized with the association of the Siciliens and the not-Sicilians. The Commission, executive council of the American Maffia was born, with in theory levelling participation of caïds such as Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Bugsy Siegel, Joe Adonis or Lepke Buchalter. Today nobody knows really who became the large godfather of this family.

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