Was Michael Corleone based partly on Adolf Hitler?

 When we consider The Godfather films, it is important to understand the context. The writer Mario Puzo fought against the Germans in the second world war. In that sense Michael Corleone mirrors his own experience, as that character has come back from fighting for the allies, at the start of the film. He seems an innocent figure. But does his subsequent journey into darkness shadow that of Adolf Hitler, and does the writer leave subtle hints along the way to suggest as much?

Not that Puzo himself or Coppola have ever implied or said that this is the case. This is entirely my theory, and based on shaky evidence I must admit: 

In the first film, the main baddie is called Barzini. You can get Nazi from his name. 

In the second film, the main baddie is called Hyman Roth, and he's Jewish, and just as Jew's are the main target of Hitler's ire and hatred, Roth becomes a focal figure of hate for Michael. Roth betrays Michael early in the film, and Michael eventually gives the order to have him killed. Similarly named Hermann Goring was one of the most important figures in the Nazi movement, who for a long time was Hitler's number two. Eventually he betrayed Hitler, who tried to have him arrested, towards the end of the second world war when Hitler was already in the bunker. 

In fact Hyman Roth is based on Meyer Lansky, but Lansky also has a connection to world war II, as he helped to dob in Nazi sympathisers. It's just the name itself of Hyman is too similar to Goring's first name to completely ignore that link as well.

More evidence could be that in the first film Sonny is shot and killed by men loyal to Barzini while held up at a toll booth in his car. Another leading Nazi in Richard Heydrich who was one of the leading architects of the final solution, was shot and killed in a motor car.

One of the pivotal scenes in the first film happens when Michael earns his spurs by killing both a corrupt police chief and the gangster Sollazo, in an Italian restaurant in New York. He then has to leave America and flee to Sicily to escape prosecution. I wonder if this is based on Hitler's Munich beer hall putsch, when he held two politicians to ransom with a pistol, admittedly not shooting them, and then was arrested after a protest the next day. He subsequently went into prison, in a sense into exile, just like Michael goes into exile.

The shadowy intrigue that takes place at the end of the first film, both with Don Corleone and Michael himself, are somewhat reminiscent of the political manoeuvring that took place in Germany with Von Papen and Hindenberg that eventually made Hitler chancellor and lead to subsequent disaster. Perhaps the same occurs in the films; the ageing Don makes Michael his successor believing that will placate the other families, only to create an even bigger monster than himself. And all the lines like "It was Barzini who approached me." remind you of politics.

Indeed Michael decides to wipe out the heads of the other families, just as Hitler wipes out the other political parties to make himself the supreme, unchallenged leader. At the end of the first film Michael is the all-powerful Don. 

The clues very much continue into the second film, for example when Michael's son shows him a picture that he has drawn of his father, I wonder if that is a reference to Hitler's love of drawing and art. And Hitler was also known to love eating cake, and there is a scene where they are celebrating Roth's birthday while in Cuba, and eating his birthday cake. And perhaps it is a bit of a stretch, but Fredo's flight into Havana with a suitcase of money to pay off Roth, and in theory save Michael, is perhaps a reflection of Hanna Reitsch's trip into Berlin to reach the Fuhrer, although he subsequently refused to flee the bunker.

The senate trials at the end of the second film? The Nuremberg trials, perhaps. And Michael's Lake Tahoe compound is on the water, perhaps a reference to the villa on the lake where the final solution was agreed upon. Lake Tahoe is also on the California-Nevada border, just as Hitler grew up on the Austrian-German border. Traitor brother Fredo is ruthlessly dispatched on this same lake by bodyguard Al who is loyal to Michael, perhaps reflecting Hitler's desire to get rid of those who were once close to him but he perceives as being disloyal, like the leader of the brownshirts Ernst Rohm, who was got rid of after the Night of the long knives. In fact these killings at the end of the Godfather films, are very much like this political bloodbath that the Nazi's carried out at the beginning of their reign.

Clues even continue into the third film, as at the end of the Godfather part III Michael's daughter is shot and killed by an assassin. Is this supposed to perhaps be a reflection of what happened to Hitler's niece Geli Raubal, who died at her own hand of a pistol shot?

                                 Did Mario Puzo portray Michael Corleone as a Hitler-like figure?

There is also spoken reference to Hitler. Clemenza in the first film tells Michael: "been ten years since the last one. We really should have stopped Hitler back in Munich."

When he says ten years since the last one, perhaps in a metaphorical sense he is really referring to world wars. The world war one reference is there as well, because not just is Sonny shot in a car, but there are other numerous other instances in both films where assassinations carried out in motor cars or close to motor cars, but hinted at as well "before I reach my hotel, I'll be assassinated", for example. The whole thing with motor cars and death that seems to happen in the Godfather, could be as much as a reference to Archduke Ferdinand as anything else, who's killing started all this twentieth century madness.

If my theory is correct, and admittedly there is little reason to believe so despite all the evidence presented above, then it probably only reflects Puzo's obsession with his own history and the history of world war II. Perhaps he wanted to present Michael as a tormented figure who struggled with his duality. The first duality that you get is the fact that Michael is an Italian American. Then he goes off to world war II, to potentially kill other Italians, who are fighting on the other side. The other duality is the challenge that Michael is faced with over the course of both films, which he ultimately fails. That of wanting to reconcile his hope to make his family legitimate and non-criminal, and juggle that with his attempts to stay afloat.

Ultimately he fails because to achieve that and stay alive he has to become what he most dreads in the first place, that of being an old-fashioned gangster like Barzini (Nazi.) His journey from fairly innocent son of the godfather into a ruthless godfather himself, and the dark scenes at the end of the second film as he hunkers down with paranoia in his own compound, seem very much to reflect Hitler's own descent into the gloomy dungeon of his own bunker. And both stories clearly represent the dangers of pursuing power for its own purpose.

My own feeling is that despite both Puzo and Coppola seeming to present the Corleone's as being these sympathetic figures, it was more nuanced than that. Some of the "bad" characters in the film are in fact treated kindly. Barzini comes across as this cultured and intelligent figure. Herman Roth, admittedly like Barzini a scheming figure, seems most content with relaxing in his Florida home while watching sports. It is Michael who is the restless, ambitious one, travelling around, having his own brother bumped off. By the end of the first two films he is seen to be this all-powerful tyrant.

So what's interesting to me is that maybe Puzo hated these Godfather types and regarded them with contempt. Painting Michael as a Hitler like figure in that context, doesn't seem so far-fetched. Perhaps one of the most telling scenes in the second film occurs when the already corrupted senator Geary, stands up and mentions that these hearings are in no way a stain on the typical Italian American, who are hard-working and god fearing. These thoughts might have echoed Puzo's own, and he believed they were tainted and dragged down by the mafia and the image that they portrayed.