NAZI BLINDERS

From gun battles to extortion, the gangs of Berlin were as brutal as their Birmingham and Chicago counterparts between the wars. And not even the rise of Hitler could stop Germany's criminal 'Ringvereine' flourishing

- Martin Phillips

AMERICA was in the grip of the "golden age for gangsters". Bugsy Siegel's mob Murder, Incorporated was up and running in New York and AI Capone and Lucky Luciano were at the height of their nefarious powers. Meanwhile Berlin, the third largest city in the world and known as the "Chicago of Europe", was afflicted with its own very particular brand of mob rule similar to that executed by Birmingham's Peaky Blinders.

It was 1928 and within five years Germany's gangsters would be eclipsed by the rise to power of the biggest mob boss of them all-Adolf Hitler. But the crime that had been rife under Germany's Weimar Republic was not about to end.

Criminal activity was supposedly incompatible with the Nazi ideals of a superior race and from 1933 the party would apparently crack down on it. But a more corrupt bunch of Mafiosi than the Nazis themselves it was hard to imagine, and over the coming years they were happy to tolerate criminals who fitted into their amoral regime, while rivals were made to disappear.

Best-selling author Simon Scarrow's latest thriller, A Death in Berlin, lifts the lid on the sordid underworld that thrived under the Nazis as his fictional hero, Criminal Investigator Horst Schenke, delves into the seedy 1940 nightclub scene and gets embroiled in the gang world behind it.

But back to 1928, where the seeds of lawlessness had already been sown and were bearing fruit. The economic crisis that beset Germany's post-First World War Weimar Republic was the perfect breeding ground for criminal gangs. Chief amongst them were the "Ringvereine" or "Wrestling Clubs" organisations set up to supposedly rehabilitate convicts leaving jail but which were perfect vehicles for organised crime.