Allied officials protected Naples’ wartime contraband economy

Evidence

An entire contraband system for food, clothing, cigarettes, appliances, and other goods took root in Naples, despite largely disappearing elsewhere in Italy after the war. It became so efficient that penicillin and other medical supplies were readily available there even when there were shortages in military hospitals. GIs even joined the ranks of customers frequenting brothels and buying contraband in the famed and feared Quartieri Spagnoli neighborhood (originally built in the sixteenth century to house Spanish troops). By April 1944, the British writer Norman Lewis, then an intelligence officer, wrote of the underground market, “It is becoming generally known that it operates under the protection of certain high-placed Allied Military Government officials.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 335

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Postwar Naples black markets outlasted those elsewhere in Italy. (similarity 0.80)