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On 15 August 2007, six young men with origins in the Italian region of Calabria were ambushed and murdered in the German steel town of Duisburg. This was northern Europe\u2019s St Valentine\u2019s Day massacre, the worst ever mafia bloodbath outside Italy and the United States. Suddenly, journalists across the globe were struggling with what the New York Times called an \u2018unpronounceable name\u2019: \u2018ndrangheta (en-drang-get-ah.) In the 1990s, the \u2018ndrangheta placed itself in a leading position in the European wholesale cocaine market by dealing direct with South American producers. It is now thought to be the wealthiest and most powerful of Italy\u2019s major criminal brotherhoods. But how, when, and why did it first emerge?