It's been said, and I forget exactly where, that the Corleone Family was in a decline after the first Godfather movie. However, I don't see any evidence in the second movie that the Corleone Family had lost much of its power. I mean in the book, it says that the Corleone Family established itself as one of the most powerful Mafia families in the country after Michael defeated the Tattaglia and Barzini Families (in the book, he didn't execute the heads of the Five Families).

Of course, the book didn't go as far as the movies so it might not be fair to use it.

Now that I think about it. Perhaps moving out west reduced the power of the family since the big cities had the most influential Mafia families in the country. I don't know. What do you think?

Well at the end of part 2 The resoto Brothers were killed, so was Frankie. Maybe that would have created probelms for the corleones as they didnt have any strong leader in new york. But i think the corleones were always strong during part 2.

This is a good topic. After the war with Barzini and the other families, the Corleones were dethroned as the most powerful New York outfit, and severely weakened. (The book says that Barzini had assumed the position the Corleones once had.) But this position of power was regained by the end of the book (and the movie). Michael, under Vito's instruction, made the Corleones look weaker than they actually were in order to prevent the other families from picking up on the scent of his extensive preparations for a brutal strike aimed not only at regaining but also expanding the Corleone's former supremacy in New York. (In the book Barzini and Greene are killed by Neri, and Tattaglia is killed by Rocco, if I'm not mistaken.)

When Michael refused to allow Tessio and Clemenza to take steps to curb the encroachments of Barzini's people on their territory, Tessio argued that Michael was wrong, and that the move to Nevada should be made from a position of strength in New York, not one of weakness. Tessio was right, but he didn't realize that Michael was well aware of this, which was why Michael was building a secret regime under Rocco Lampone. So again, when Michael makes the move to Nevada, he does so from a position of undisputed supremacy in New York. As the Chairman of the senate committee says, Michael had the heads of the Five Families killed "to assume and consolidate his nefarious power." On the other hand, there is the remark made by Tom that the Corleone Family "once was" like the Roman empire, which implies a decline of some kind. There is also the troubles caused by the Rosato's trying to break off from Clemenza and form their own completely independent family.

But by the beginning of GFIII Michael is exponentially more powerful than he ever was. Just think of his dismissive remarks about Joey Zasa, to the effect that he is a small time punk, and consider those remarks in light of Michael's comment to Vincent that Zasa is in charge of what used to be the Corelone family business in New York.

There is nothing in GFII to indicate the family's decline.

The remark about the Roman Empire referred to the loyalty, integrity, and continuity of that Empire at its height and how Michael's style of governance imperiled that integrity and continuity inthe Corleone family.

Agreed, as far as the bottom line of business operations is concerned (hence my qualification, "of some kind"). Indeed Tom's remark in question comes after he 'reminds' Michael that "he's won."

At any rate, I think your suggestion about what Tom was referring to is plausible.

First, welcome to the boards, darkshowers. You've made an excellent start!
As all the responses above indicated, Michael had actually strengthened and consolidated the Corleones' position as the Number One family in New York by whacking the heads of the other families. As you point out, only Barzini and Tattaglia are whacked in the novel, but I believe Michael sent Neri to head the Barzini family (temporarily). Clemenza was left in power over the Corleones' New York empire when Michael moved to Nevada.

The New York operation seemed to be in some turmoil due to Frankie Pentangeli's troubles with the Rosato brothers. But the movie doesn't give us any indication that a war was going on--it seemed like more of a territorial dispute, nothing that threatened Michael's hold on the family. In fact, Michael was encouraging the Rosatos. That's a long way of saying that I don't think the Corleones were in decline after GF. And, as 90 Cal said, Michael was immeasurably more powerful than ever at the beginning of III,

However, Zaf raises a point that has long troubled me: After Frankie turned rat and the Rosatos went on the run following the botched assassination of Frankie and the shootout with the cops, who was running the Corleone empire in New York? I can't believe that Michael, the arch-controller, would have let an inch of his territory slip or fall by the wayside.

Joey Zasa perhaps

I believe that Neri became wartime capo over Tessio's old regime, and then moved West with Michael. Several of the Barzini/Tataglia capos switched sides immediately after the hits occurred.

Perhaps. But the botched assassination and ensuing shootout occurred late in 1958. Zasa turns up as the boss of the olive oil business in 1979, a little over 20 years later. I think he looked too young, in 1979, to have taken over the family in 1958-59.

A good chronology question. Since in GFIII Michael is still like the Supreme Court in organized crime circles, he had to have the strings of Corleone power still in his hands. Who ran the NY family in the interim? We'll never know.

Yeah i agree TB.I was actually just messing around.

Well,
a side question: why did Micheal dicide to move out of New York after the Great Massacure? After the GM, he was NO.1 family in New York and the moving action will surely make the cops suspect him of mass murders.

Who is heading the NY family in the Winegardner books?

The move to Nevada was Michael's major attempt to make the Corleone Family "completely legitimate." He turned over the operation of the "olivo oil business" (the family's traditional rackets such as gambling and unions) to Clemenza. He still controlled NY rackets, even more than before he whacked the other Dons, but he was now doing it long-distance through Clemenza.
Leaving NY actually made Michael less suspect with the police. Of course he had an alibi when the massacre occurred (he was in church!!). But, if the authorities suspected him of ordering the massacre, his move to Nevada could indicate that he was actually abandoning the NY Mafia life. No law enforcement official with any brains would believe that, but that would be the way it looked.

TB I would say it was Michael's effort to make it APPEAR the family was completely legitimate. He still "owned" politicians, he acquired Moe Green's Casino and Klingman's casino by moving them both out (the first one without Roth's permission, the second one with it), he controlled Pentageli's New York operation, he committed perjury before congress, and of course he killed all his "enemies" at the end of the movie.

Yes, dt, it certainly was only the appearance of legitimacy. And, as we've discussed in other threads, a big part of Michael's problem was his continual rationalization of his gangsterism as no worse than the behavior of political pezzanovanti.

I tend to disagree that this is "rationalizing," if by this you mean self-deception. One of the great themes of GFI-III which Puzo & FFC want to communicate to the audience is precisely this point that the line between the legitimate world of business and politics, on the one hand, and the world of organized crime, on the other, is hazy at best. A good example is the parallel imagery that Puzo and FFC give us between the Commission meeting in GFI and the meeting in Cuba in GFII. The long wooden table decked out with fruit filled bowls, the way the camera moves from attendee to attendee accompanied by introductions, is identical in both cases, and the implicit conclusion we are meant to draw from this parallel is that these two worlds are more alike than we might be comfortable admitting. (In GFI it's all Mafia heads at the table, in GFII you have a couple of Mafia heads along with the representatives of large, "legitimate" corporations. A less striking but essentially similar parallel comes in GFIII during the Vatican meeting.) There is also the crucial statement Michael makes in GFIII, that all his life he wanted to climb the ladder of legitimate business, but that the higher up he goes in the legitimate world, the more crooked he discovers it to be. This is an expression of a clear assessment of the circumstances based on first-hand experience, not a rationalization. Another good example is Michael's remark to Kay in GFI that she is the one who is naive in thinking that senators and presidents don't have men killed in the same way and for the same reasons that a man like Vito does.

I would add that according to Wikipedia, Roberto Calvi, on whom the GFIII character Frederick Keinszig is based, "was reportedly quoted as saying shortly before his death: 'The only book you've got to read is The Godfather. That's the only one that tells how the world is really run.'" He meant the legitimate world of high finance, in which he was a big player.

Crime is defined by statute and whether committed by Mafiosi or anyone else it is still crime.

I neglected to mention the book's epigraph, a quotation from Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." The same is generally true, as Machiavelli observes, and as history attests, of the founding of nations.

"Who is heading the NY family in the Winegardner books?"

According to the books, Pentangeli was replaced as caporegime by Richie "Two-Guns" Nobilio, another former member of Clemenza's crew. Had Pentangeli not been selected to replace Clemenza in 1958, Nobilio probably would have then. But he was chosen in 1959, and was still caporegime as of late 1964, the year the books end. No idea what happens to him afterward, but there's a lot of time separating 1964 and 1979-1980, so he could be gone by Part III.

On this point I'm with the Roth of the GFII second draft. In this version, when Michael visits Roth and pretends that it was Pentangelli who tried to have him killed, and then goes on to say that Frankie is a dead man and will thus need a replacement, Roth says:

"Michael, these things are unimportant. Who should be the manager of a dime store, Joe or Jack? Unimportant. You do what you think is right."

Roth and Michael are on a higher tier of business operations, which makes the New York crime scene look like a nickel and dime store. It needs to be attended to, but in the grand scheme of their higher level dealings, the New York people are "small time enforcers," to borrow Michael's description of Zasa in GFIII.