Naples ’44

Theme

Black market

Smuggling, theft of Allied goods, corruption, racketeering

Appears in 9 diary entries.

  1. November 26 1943
    Restaurants reopen with black-market prices; Lewis catches up with Captain Frazer, whose health and mood have visibly declined.
  2. January 1 1944
    A tedious, unproductive investigation into telephone-wire theft, which the Army wrongly treats as sabotage rather than opportunistic copper theft.
  3. January 19 1944
    Chaotic, arbitrary court proceedings at Castel Capuano illustrate the absurd unevenness of wartime justice, set against an open black market.
  4. March 13 1944
    The crackdown on the black market punishes only the powerless, as shown by a farcical smuggling trial that collapses through prosecutorial incompetence.
  5. March 14 1944
    A harrowing case of a boy maimed by soldiers guarding supply trucks against child gangs who steal from them.
  6. April 18 1944
    The black market's scale is staggering — a large share of Neapolitan income derives from stolen Allied goods, tolerated by officials at high levels.
  7. May 9 1944
    The black market's scale and brazenness are staggering — stolen Allied goods are openly, even elegantly, advertised for sale near the courts trying petty thieves.
  8. May 11 1944
    A visit to the confident, well-connected prisoner Fortuna, who expects to be acquitted of a penicillin-racketeering charge despite Lewis's evidence.
  9. August 30 1944
    Lewis races to Naples to fetch medicine for an ailing friend, discovering along the way a black-market pharmacy relabeling stolen drugs.

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