Say for instance that Don Vito had a brother who had betrayed him , like Fredo had done Michael. Do you think Don Vito would have killed his brother under the same circumstances? What do you think?

Very interesting question. I'd have to personally say no. The Don as a child had to witness his entire family be murdered by the local mafia chief, and Im sure that is what helped make him the family man he became as he got older. Family was a very important thing to the Don, as it was to Michael .. except Michael let buisness rule his life and was blind to his families suffering, as to where the Don was not quite blind and looked out for his family first. I think if anything Vito would have been very hurt and dissapointed, and possibly find SOME other solution besides death.

Correct Answer. I totally agree. Vito was a family man and Mike a business man.

i agree that seeing his family murdered contributed to vito becoming a family man. i think it is interesting to note that the very thing that made vito a family man, michael has a blatent disregard for, namely the killing of family members.

WWVD! No I have though about this too, and I would say that Vito would have killed Paolo if he had done what Fredo did. True, Vito was a famliy man, but if Paolo(who was Vito's older brother) had endangered Mama, Sonny, Fredo,Mike or Connie for his own personal gain, and had been warned not to, but would never accept his place under his younger brother, then yes, I believe Vito would have killed Paolo.

that's really a good question, i personally think that vito sure was a family man and not like michael only a business man, but vito was also a business man and if his brother would do the same to him like fredo does to michael, i think he wouldn't see paolo as his brother anymore and i'm not sure if he would kill him but i do believe that he would send him away, and he didnt would want to see him again.

I don't believe a brother of Vito's would have betrayed him in the first place, and that's the difference.

If he had, I'm not sure Vito would've been so quick to assassinate him. I believe Vito preferred to use the threat of murder as opposed to actually killing people - like when he sent Luca Brasi to make the bandleader "an offer he couldn't refuse". When the undertaker comes to see him asking for Vito to kill the men who attacked his daughter, Vito says that murder is too much to ask as his daughter is still alive. You can see by his facial expressions that he finds the whole matter of killing distasteful, and to kill a family member would have been wrong in his eyes, I think. Compare this with Michael who says in GFII that he doesn't feel the need to kill everyone - just his enemies. Michael was a lot more merciless and cold-blooded I think.

he would just cut paolo out of the family.
Vito is a "moustache pete" an old school Don and the mafia is about family, he wont kill his own brother like mikey. He'll just put paolo somewhere far where he can't do more damage. and maybe for security, assign a crew of 2 or 3 to keep him in check.

I dunno, this is a good question.

One thing to remember is that Michael didn't just decide to get rid of Fredo on a whim: Fredo had betrayed the family on multiple occasions.

First, at the hotel meeting with Moe Greene. Michael is trying to get a deal done, and Fredo starts, wittingly or unwittingly, trying to undermine him in front of Greene. Michael tells him, flat out, "don't ever take sides against the family again."

Then, Fredo helps set up the hit attempt at the Nevada lake house. Exactly how much Fredo has to do with it is up for debate, but he was certainly involved.

In Havana on New Year's Eve, Michael tells Fredo he knows he was the one that betrayed him. He invites Fredo to get into his car and flee Cuba with him, and I think if he had actually done it at that point, Michael would have let him live. But when he chose to try to flee to safety with the Hyman Roth group, that was about the last straw for Michael.

The point of no return was the scene at the lake house where Michael was trying to get info from Fredo on the Senate investigators. Fredo is still sandbagging to protect Roth -- all he tells Michael is the useless piece of info that the Senate lawyer Questadt is on the Roth payroll, something that Michael almost certainly already knows.

Then Fredo launches into the "It's not how I wanted it!!" tirade, and Michael knows he can never trust Fredo to be satisfied with his role in the family. If the only problem with Fredo was that he was weak and stupid, Michael could handle that by putting him in non-important positions. But if he was going to keep angling for a bigger role in the business, he would never be satisfied as long as Michael was running the show and not him. So that's when Michael decided Fredo had to go.

What would Vito have done? I don't know. Probably just banished Fredo completely out of the family business and be done with it. But the problem is, that Fredo really isn't all that stupid. He knows enough to be dangerous. One way or another, Vito would have had to deal with that.

Its a good question, but in a sense its asking to compare apples and oranges. Don Vito would NEVER have killed a brother. Hell, he couldn't even bring himself to kill a son-in-law, fully knowing that the son-in-law was responsible for the death of his own son.

Part of the effect of Michael killing Fredo was to show how "Americanized" (and thus, less soulful) Michael had become. Vito had "lost his family" through no fault of his own; Michael couldn't make that same claim. The times had changed, and Vito was a throwback to some older times that no longer existed.

I think Vito would have simply banished his brother to an area from which the brother couldn't have been a threat.

I also don't think Vito would have killed his brother. Vito had a sentimental streak completely lacking in Micheal.