"Unions exposed as war saboteurs" Topic

"AS the Abbott government begins to take on union power and corruption, a timely new book reveals the union movement's role in one of the most shameful periods of Australian history.

What the wharfies did to Australian troops – and their nation's war effort – between 1939 and 1945 is nothing short of an abomination…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Wow – all the American union dock workers did was having the Mafia controlled union blackmail the government into letting Lucky Luicano back in the US to ensure that kind of nonsense didn't happen.

Wolfhag

I recall reading that invasion-theatened Britain in 1940 lost over a million man-hours to industrial action that year. Perils of democracy.

And no doubt many businesses exploited their employees ..

Lee John Ayre

You hit the nail on the head!

French unions obedient to komintern orders sabotaged the war effirt against the nazus till 41 when the home of the workers brilliant future was invaded.
Repairs, spare pices and more for aircrafts and other machines. ( for ex none of the big Farman bomber could fly at one point)
Ammunition duds or opening with a little red flag and a peace message.
Still doing so for the Indochina war. Many dead guys for this.
Bloody murder by premature exploding ammo. My father at artillery officer school mid 50s, was basic traning on old 75; all the ammo (big stocks, the Germans did not have to make more) was dubious, they had a long cable to the shooting thing, as many would explode in the tube.
Because of wartime resistance (post 41 only) and post war balance of power, no one mostly was looked for treason and murder. A pity.
Some of the red expats ended up heading prisonners death camps in Nam. Pol pot instructors, back as professor in Sorbonne.

Not news to me

the Longshoremen strike in NZ before Guadalcanal comes to mine also.

I seem to remember reading there were problems with trade union leaders in Britain at the start of the war, because Hitler was allied to Stalin at the time

I read somewhere that in 43 the Railroad Workers union want to strike. By that point even Roosevelt had enough & threatened to draft everyone in the union & turn control over to the military. Strike was done. It's incredible how politics of control rear up during disasters or critical times, just like we see in the COVID-19 mess now. People never change.

Interesting story about how the USA, in WW2, secured the great seaport complexes of NY/NJ from labor and espionage problems. They made a deal with Lucky Luciano, chief of the American Mafia, who was then serving a very lengthy prison sentence. Luciano was to keep the ports "operating smoothly", in exchange for which the US government agreed to free him and deport him back to his native Italy at the end of the war.

Both parties kept their sides of the bargain and everything worked out very nicely.

B

Interesting story about how the USA, in WW2, secured the great seaport complexes of NY/NJ from labor and espionage problems. They made a deal with Lucky Luciano, chief of the American Mafia, who was then serving a very lengthy prison sentence.

It was an actual US Naval Intelligence program, Operation Underworld.

Luciano, as the biggest boss among the 5 New York Mafia families, was the most important player in the program. But Meyer Lansky also played a notable (and interesting) role.

Organized crime in the US up to that time was largely dominated by Italian immigrants, but usually also reliant on Jewish accountants and lawyers. Lansky was an up-and-comer in the New York organized crime scene. He was used by Naval Intelligence to help keep the docks in order, particularly after the Normandie, a French ocean liner being converted to a troop carrier, burned up at dockside.

But he had a side "hobby" that US Naval Intelligence also provides support (and cover) for. He liked to gather goon squads to beat the $h!t out of Nazi sympathizers. He was rather notorious for breaking up rallies of the German-American Bund. Literally breaking them up, using many beefy young men with baseball bats.

In late 1940 / early 1941 the US was still officially "neutral", and the activities of the German-American Bund could not be prevented under any federal laws. But there was clearly an interest in reducing / discouraging the Bund's activities.

Lansky had developed this "hobby" during the later half of the 1930s, and it was pretty well known by 1940. So US Naval Intelligence kind of pitched in to help him out, feeding him intelligence on upcoming events, and giving his goon squads some cover by stepping in with local police and judges.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I saw a documentary a while back on the History Channel and IIRC they interviewed the US Naval Officer that "worked" with Lucky. For the Sicily Invasion …

For better or worse the World still turned during WW2.

I recommend looking up the Episode of "The War" Documentary series that deals with the impact of Jim Crow laws on ship production in Mobile, where things got so bad they had to open up a whole other shipyard so they could have one for white workers and one for black workers so they could keep production levels up in the face of segregationist backlash.

There is no doubt about that. In both WWI and WWII many Blacks who served and fought in the US Military were not treated very well either. When they returned back to the States … A very sad situation, IMO …

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

L4 wrote -
"There is no doubt about that. In both WWI and WWII many Blacks who served and fought in the US Military were not treated very well either. When they returned back to the States … A very sad situation, IMO …"

True words, to be sure.

But by Korea, the Army had integrated all its combat units (I'm betting under the duress of personnel shortages), which in turn lit the fuze for the civil rights movement and ultimately integration of the nation twenty years later.

The "Law of Unintended Consequences" in action?

B