What if Murder, Inc. (especially a certain Dutch Schultz) manages to kill Thomas E. Dewey in 1935-1936? What effects would this have on the FDR and/or Truman presidencies? Who will be the subject of the wrongly printed headline instead of Dewey?
What if Murder, Inc. (especially a certain Dutch Schultz) manages to kill Thomas E. Dewey in 1935-1936? What effects would this have on the FDR and/or Truman presidencies? Who will be the subject of the wrongly printed headline instead of Dewey?
This would be a boon for J.Edgar Hoover as the murder of such a major figure will prompt FDR to give him and the FBI massively expanded powers.
What would be the realistic effects of that? I cant say
Didn't he even go so far as to deny that it actually existed?Except that Hoover believed that the Mob was finished with the end of Prohibition and publically denied its power until the Big Meeting of 1973 shoved it in his face.
The more realistic form of this question is, what if Arthur Flegenheimer ("Dutch Schultz") kills Dewey before the Mob can stop (i.e., kill) Flegenheimer. Killing prosecutors makes no sense from the Mob's point of view. It just inflames the public and brings demands for more prosecution. It's not like no one else can do Dewey's job. (There was a report that the Mob considered killing Giuliani in the 1980's http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/nyregion/26threat.html but experts have been skeptical of this.)
Long-term effects: Obviously the GOP is going to nominate someone else for president in 1944 and 1948. Maybe Irving Ives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Ives becomes governor of New York in this scenario, in which case he is at least a plausible presidential nominee.
Except that Hoover believed that the Mob was finished with the end of Prohibition and publically denied its power until the Big Meeting of 1973 shoved it in his face.
Hoover would be gone zippity-split, replaced by someone actually motivated to, well, enforce the law and fight crime instead of spying on citizens and posing for the papers.
Unless Murder Inc. genuinely behaved like the movie The Mechanic, Luciano would be very unhappy with Pflugenheimer's very unsubtle violation of Bugsy Seagal's One Rule ("We Only Kill Each Other")*. He cuts his deal with Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson that much sooner, and Pflugenheimer dies that much sooner.
*It's not really about following the rules, it's about not getting caught and/or leaving a trail.