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Zusammenfassung von Killing the Mob

Name: Killing the Mob
Rating: 4.5 (321 reviews)
Author: Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

The Fight Against Organized Crime in America

4.5 (321 Bewertungen)

22 Min.

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Killing the Mob by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard is a non-fiction book that explores the organized crime in America during the 20th century. It provides a detailed account of the ruthless individuals and organizations who gained immense power and influence during this time.

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What’s in it for me? Explore what happens when criminal minds get organized.

It’s the early 1930s and the Great Depression is sweeping the United States. Across the country, people are losing their jobs, their homes, and their hope. It’s a time of despair. Soon, a villain emerges in the popular imagination – the banks – those looming faceless institutions that value dollars over human lives. Before long, a new hero has emerged as well – the bank robber.

This is the beginning of a new era in crime, where the line between the criminal and the hero begins to blur. From Bonnie and Clyde to Sicilian mob bosses, these blinks tell the fascinating story of how notorious gangsters gained fame and fortune and reveal how Hollywood, the FBI, and the American public fell under the mob’s spell.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why the Allies asked the Mafia for help in World War II;
how the mob controlled Hollywood; and
how an ordinary police officer caught the Mafia’s top bosses.

Bonnie and Clyde were America’s original outlaw sweethearts.

Along with the new breed of villains and gangsters that emerged during the Great Depression was the man tasked with catching them. His name was J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Bureau of Investigation, America’s first national law-enforcement agency. Who did Hoover set his sights on first? You’ve probably heard of them: Bonnie and Clyde.

In 1934, the young Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were on a roll. Their relationship had begun in 1930 when Bonnie was an unemployed waitress and Clyde was an impoverished laborer. Bonnie had left her first husband years earlier, though she still had his name tattooed on her thigh. She enjoyed writing poetry, but when she met Clyde, she turned her attention to stealing cars, holding up gas stations, and robbing banks with her new boyfriend.

Bonnie and Clyde weren’t the sort of people you’d expect to pose a physical threat. For starters, both of them walked with a limp. Bonnie’s legs had been badly burned in a car crash, and Clyde had deliberately chopped off two of his toes during a prison stint, to avoid being assigned hard labor. It was a testament to their love that, when the pain in Bonnie’s legs got really bad, Clyde would carry her around. When police found photos that Bonnie and Clyde had taken of themselves, they looked just like any other young couple in love – well, apart from the sawn-off shotgun that Bonnie was brandishing. When the photos were published in the press, Bonnie and Clyde became celebrities overnight: a glamorous symbol of rebellion against the cruel banks who were pushing people into poverty.

But there was a brutal side to this love story; Bonnie and Clyde had killed 13 people during their crime spree. Hoover was determined not to let that number climb any higher.

Unlike these criminal lovebirds, Hoover had no romance in his life. At the age of 29, he still lived with his elderly mother, and his only friend was said to be his dog. Hoover dedicated himself to eliminating crime. On May 23, 1934, Hoover’s agents finally tracked down Bonnie and Clyde and opened fire on the car they were traveling in. Both were killed, with Clyde dying first. Bonnie’s screams when she realized Clyde was dead would stay with the agents for the rest of their lives.

John Dillinger was a gangster and master escape artist.

In 1934, Hoover raised the stakes. He announced a brand new breed of American felon: the so-called public enemy number one. This label would only apply to one criminal at a time, to America’s most wanted, most dangerous, person. It wouldn’t be lifted until that person was in jail, or dead.

Hoover declared that the first public enemy number one was a bank robber and gangster named John Dillinger. If you met Dillinger in a bar, you might feel drawn to his friendly, positive energy, and never know you were talking to a ruthless murderer. But make no mistake; Dillinger was so notorious that Hollywood even made a movie based on his crimes. In fact, it was the last movie that Dillinger himself would ever see.

The Mafia and the Allies came together to fight Fascism.

In 1942, World War II was in full swing, and the Allies were poised to invade Sicily. But the Mediterranean island wouldn’t be easy to capture; 200,000 Fascist troops lurked in the island's mountains. Who could help the Allies successfully invade the island? Incredibly, the answer was the Mafia.

Decades earlier, the Mafia had fought, and lost, its own war against Fascism. In the 1920s, when Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini came to power, he’d vowed to drive the Mafia out of Sicily. With good reason, too; the Mafia had had a brutal stranglehold over the Sicilian people and economy for as long as anyone could remember.

The Mafia’s drug racket destroyed Lucky Luciano’s career.

During the era of prohibition, the mob illegally imported alcohol into the United States and sold it on the black market for hugely inflated prices. But when prohibition ended in 1933, this lucrative income stream dried up. By 1946, it was looking for new ways to make money, and it turned its attention to a harder substance: heroin.

But the Mafia had rules and procedures that had to be followed before a new direction could be agreed upon. So in 1946, it did what any sensible business would do; it called a board meeting, to decide whether to enter the illegal drugs trade.

In the 1950s, intrigue swirled around the Mafia and J. Edgar Hoover.

By the 1950s, thanks to its activities in the drug trade, the mob’s wealth had climbed higher than ever before. What was US law enforcement doing about this crime wave? Well, according to J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, there was nothing to do, because he didn’t believe that the Mafia even existed.

In his view, there was no shadowy alliance of Italian American gangsters. Instead, there were only independent criminals running their own illegal rackets. But even if Hoover didn’t believe in organized crime, the American public was about to.

An ordinary police officer uncovered America’s top mob bosses.

In 1957, Hoover wasn’t interested in pursuing the Mafia, but someone else was. Edgar Dewitt Croswell was a police sergeant in the sleepy little town of Apalachin, in upstate New York. For Croswell, law enforcement wasn’t just a job; it was his whole life. He slept in the local police barracks every night and strove to know each and every criminal in the local area. And there was one criminal in particular that he had his eye on.

His name was Joseph Barbara, and he was a high-ranking Mafia boss who owned a luxurious mansion in Apalachin. After observing Barbara for years on end, Croswell finally had a breakthrough. He learned that Barbara had ordered vast amounts of premium meat from a Chicago butcher for November 14. Barbara had also booked numerous rooms at nearby luxury hotels for that date. Croswell deduced that Barbara was throwing a party. But not just any party. Croswell believed this was a hoopla for America’s most powerful gangsters.

In the 1960s, the Mafia and Hollywood worked hand in glove.

When you think of Hollywood in the 1960s, you might think of stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Kirk Douglas. But the true power in LA’s movie industry was off-screen. And all too often, that power lay with the Mafia. But how and why was the Mafia involved in Hollywood? The answer lies in an American phenomenon that, sadly, is even older than La-La Land: racial discrimination.

In the early twentieth century, many of Hollywood’s film producers had Eastern-European Jewish backgrounds. They had the ambition and the talent to make movies, but they didn’t have the money. That was in part because the banks were too prejudiced to lend to people from these ethnic backgrounds. With few other options, the producers turned to the Mafia for funds. The mob happily agreed, seeing a golden opportunity to skim money off the profits from the movies they’d finance.

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Worum geht es in Killing the Mob?

Killing the Mob (2021) explores America’s uneasy relationship with organized crime. It exposes the shocking influence of the Mafia on twentieth-century history and culture and reveals the outrageous exploits of America’s most notorious gangsters.

Wer Killing the Mob lesen sollte

True crime lovers
gangster movie aficionados
History buffs looking for a different angle

Über den Autor

Bill O’Reilly is an author, journalist, and television host. His show The O’Reilly Factor was one of America’s most popular cable shows, and his Killing book series is the best-selling nonfiction series of all time. Martin Dugard is a New York Times best-selling author; his books include Into Africa and The Explorers.

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