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caporegime, and like a young, untrumpeted Napoleon, showed a genius for city
warfare. He also showed a merciless ruthlessness, the lack of which had been
Don Corleone’s only fault as a conqueror.
From 1935 to 1937 Sonny Corleone made a reputation as the most
cunning and relentless executioner the underworld had yet known. Yet for sheer
terror even he was eclipsed by the awesome man named Luca Brasi.
It was Brasi who went after the rest of the Irish gunmen and single-
handedly wiped them out. It was Brasi, operating alone when one of the six
powerful families tried to interfere and become the protector of the
independents, who assassinated the head of the family as a warning. Shortly

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after, the Don recovered from his wound and made peace with that particular
family.
By 1937 peace and harmony reigned in New York City except for
minor incidents, minor misunderstandings which were, of course, sometimes
fatal.
As the rulers of ancient cities always kept an anxious eye on the
barbarian tribes roving around their walls, so Don Corleone kept an eye on the
affairs of the world outside his world. He noted the coming of Hitler, the fall of
Spain, Germany’s strong-arming of Britain at Munich. Unblinkered by that
outside world, he saw clearly the coming global war and he understood the
implications. His own world would be more impregnable than before. Not only
that, fortunes could be made in time of war by alert, foresighted folk. But to do
so peace must reign in his domain while war raged in the world outside.
Don Corleone carried his message through the United States. He
conferred with compatriots in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, Chicago,
Philadelphia, Miami, and Boston. He was the underworld apostle of peace and,
by 1939, more successful than any Pope, he had achieved a working agreement
amongst the most powerful underworld organizations in the country. Like the
Constitution of the United States this agreement respected fully the internal
authority of each member in his state or city. The agreement covered only
spheres of. influence and an agreement to enforce peace in the underworld.
And so when World War II broke out in 1939, when the United States
joined the conflict in 1941, the world of Don Vito Corleone was at peace, in
order, fully prepared to reap the golden harvest on equal terms with all the other
industries of a booming America. The Corleone Family had a hand in supplying
black-market OPA food stamps, gasoline stamps, even travel priorities. It could
help get war contracts and then help get black-market materials for those
garment center clothing firms who were not given enough raw material because
they did not have government contracts. He could even get all the young men in
his organization, those eligible for Army draft, excused from fighting in the
foreign war. He did this with the aid of doctors who advised what drugs had to
be taken before physical examination, or by placing the men in draft-exempt
positions in the war industries.
And so the Don could take pride in his rule. His world was safe for
those who had sworn loyalty to him; other men who believed in law and order
were dying by the millions. The only fly in the ointment was that his own son,
Michael Corleone, refused to be helped, insisted on volunteering to serve his

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own country. And to the Don’s astonishment, so did a few of his other young
men in the organization. One of the men, trying to explain this to his
caporegime, said, “This country has been good to me.” Upon this story being
relayed to the Don he said angrily to the caporegime, “I have been good to him.”
It might have gone badly for these people but, as he had excused his son
Michael, so must he excuse other young men who so misunderstood their duty to
their Don and to themselves.
At the end of World War II Don Corleone knew that again his world
would have to change its ways, that it would have to fit itself more snugly into
the ways of the other, larger world. He believed he could do this with no loss of
profit.,
There was reason for this belief in his own experience. What
had put him on the right track were two personal affairs. Early in his career the
then-young Nazorine, only a baker’s helper planning to get married, had come to
him for assistance. He and his future bride, a good Italian girl, had saved their
money and had paid the enormous sum of three hundred dollars to a wholesaler
of furniture recommended to them. This wholesaler had let them pick out
everything they wanted to furnish their tenement apartment. A fine sturdy
bedroom set with two bureaus and lamps. Also the living room set of heavy
stuffed sofa and stuffed armchairs, all covered with rich gold-threaded fabric.
Nazorine and his fiancée had spent a happy day picking out what they wanted
from the huge warehouse crowded with furniture. The wholesaler took their
money, their three hundred dollars wrung from the sweat of their blood, and
pocketed it and promised the furniture to be delivered within the week to the
already rented flat.
The very next week however, the firm had gone into bankruptcy. The
great warehouse stocked with furniture had been sealed shut and attached for
payment of creditors. The wholesaler had disappeared to give other creditors
time to unleash their anger on the empty air. Nazorine, one of these, went to his
lawyer, who told him nothing could be done until the case was settled in court
and all creditors satisfied. This might take three years and Nazorine would be
lucky to get back ten cents on the dollar.
Vito Corleone listened to this story with amused disbelief. It was not
possible that the law could allow such thievery. The wholesaler owned his own
palatial home, an estate in Long Island, a luxurious automobile, and was sending
his children to college. How could he keep the three hundred dollars of the poor
baker Nazorine and not give him the furniture he had paid for? But, to make
sure, Vito Corleone had Genco Abbandando check it out with the lawyers who

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represented the Genco Pura company.
They verified the story of Nazorine. The wholesaler had all his
personal wealth in his wife’s name. His furniture business was incorporated and
he was not personally liable. True, he had shown bad faith by taking the money
of Nazorine when he knew he was going to file bankruptcy but this was a
common practice. Under law there was nothing to be done.
Of course the matter was easily adjusted. Don Corleone sent his