Europe's Deadliest Biker War: Hells Angels vs the Bandidos

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2025

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1980's and 1990's, America's biggest outlaw motorcycle gangs were looking to expand all over Europe. Unfortunately, they set their sites on the same countries, and they weren't keen on sharing territory. The Great Nordic Biker War erupted in the 1990s as the Hells Angels and Bandidos clashed for control of drug routes and territory across Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. What began as turf disputes escalated into bombings, shootings, and even attacks with anti-tank weapons o, shocking a population that never expected their streets to resemble war zones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Last few months been very...
0:06.0	There's a gym group round the corner.
0:08.0	So your post-summer resets in the bag.
0:11.0	Join now in London from as little as 1399 a month.
0:15.0	May 10th, 1996, at the Copenhagen International Airport.
0:20.0	A gang war is raging.
0:21.6	In of all places, Scandinavia, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are all seeing shootings
0:27.6	and bombings, grenade attacks, rocket launchers aimed at clubhouses, things that these countries
0:33.6	never really experienced at the time.
0:35.6	Some say the war starts over a battle for territory and drug routes, others that it's more
0:41.0	a manner of pride and honor after some bad blood incidents.
0:44.8	Either way, it's a wild, violent scene.
0:48.1	And it's about to get a whole lot wilder and a whole lot more violent.
0:53.1	The two war and gangs are both decades-old international 1% or outlaw motorcycle clubs,
0:59.0	originally started in the U.S. and now dead set on expansion all over Europe.
1:04.0	It's the infamous Hells Angels and their rivals the Banditos.
1:09.0	On this particular day, a group of Bandito's members, including the Danish president, are returning
1:14.5	from a trip to party with their affiliates in Helsinki Finland, who just opened
1:18.7	up a new clubhouse.
1:21.0	Unfortunately, there are some House Angels who had separately been returning from a trip
1:25.2	to a tattoo convention and tipped off their
1:27.6	clubmates back home to be ready and waiting for the banditos. And that they are in the parking
	...

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