Giuseppe Zangara
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| Giuseppe Zangara | |
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| Born | September 7, 1900 Ferruzzano, Calabria, Italy |
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| Died | March 20, 1933 (aged 32) Raiford, Florida, U.S. |
Giuseppe Zangara (September 7, 1900 – March 20, 1933) attempted to kill United States President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. Zangara successfully assassinated Chicago mayor Anton Cermak during the same incident.
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[edit] Early life
Zangara was born in Ferruzzano, Calabria, Italy. After serving in the Tyrolian Alps in World War I, Zangara did a variety of menial jobs in his home village before emigrating with his uncle to the United States in 1923. He settled in Paterson, New Jersey and on September 11, 1929, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
[edit] Physical health problems
Zangara, a poorly educated bricklayer, suffered severe pain in his abdomen, later attributed to adhesions of the gall bladder. These were later cited as a cause for his increasing mental delusions. It became increasingly difficult for him to work due to both his physical and mental conditions, and in his fevered mind came to believe the President of the United States was supernaturally responsible for causing his pain. Shortly before becoming a legal citizen of the United States, Giuseppe was diagnosed with appendicitis. This led to him having an appendectomy in 1926. Further, he was a very lonely man; he blamed authority figures for his pain, but the side effects of his condition included chronic flatulence, while his outspoken and impatient nature likely pushed other people away. Other sources report that Zangara envied those who had more than he did, and sought the assassination of "all capitalist presidents and kings." Zangara began plotting to assassinate the current president Herbert Hoover, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was elected to replace him before Zangara could act on his plan. Zangara would later say, "Hoover and Roosevelt — everybody the same."
[edit] Assassination attempt
On February 15, 1933, FDR was giving a speech in Bayfront Park in the city of Miami, Florida where Zangara was living, working the occasional odd job, and living off his savings. Zangara took a .32 caliber pistol, purchased at a local pawn shop, and joined the crowd. However, being only five feet tall, he was unable to see over other people and had to stand on a wobbly, folding, metal chair, peering over the hat of Lilian Cross, a doctor's wife, to get a clear aim at his target. After the first shot, Mrs. Cross and others grabbed his arm and he fired five more shots wildly. He missed the President-Elect. Five other people were hit including Chicago mayor Anton Cermak, who was sitting next to FDR. En route to the hospital, Cermak had allegedly told FDR, "I'm glad it was me and not you, Mr. President" — words that are currently inscribed on a plaque located in Bayfront Park.
[edit] Aftermath
In the Dade County Courthouse jail, Zangara confessed and stated: "I have the gun in my hand. I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists." He pleaded guilty to four counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to 80 years. As he was led out of the courtroom, Zangara told the judge: "Four times 20 is 80. Oh, judge, don't be stingy. Give me a hundred years." The judge, aware that Cermak might not survive his wounds, replied: "Maybe there will be more later.".
Cermak died of peritonitis 19 days later, on March 6, 1933, two days after Roosevelt's inauguration, the only fatality of the shootings. Zangara was promptly indicted for first-degree murder in Cermak's death. According to Florida's felony murder law, because Zangara intended to commit murder it was irrelevant that his intended target was not the man he killed.
Zangara pleaded guilty and was sentenced to die. Zangara said after hearing his sentence: "You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You one of capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care!" Under Florida law, a convicted murderer could not share cell space with another prisoner before his execution, but another convicted murderer was already awaiting execution at Raiford. Zangara's sentence required prison officials to expand their waiting area, and the "death cell" became "Death Row."
[edit] Execution
On March 20, 1933, after spending only 10 days on Death Row, Zangara was executed in Old Sparky, the electric chair at Florida State Penitentiary in Raiford, Florida. Zangara became incensed when he learned no newsreel cameras would be filming his final moments. His last words at his execution were: "Get to hell out of here, you son of a bitch [spoken to the attending minister]. I go sit down all by myself. Viva Italia! Goodbye to all poor peoples everywhere! Lousy capitalists! No picture! Capitalists! No one here to take my picture. All capitalists lousy bunch of crooks. Go ahead. Pusha da button!"
[edit] Motivations
Raymond Moley, a leading criminologist, interviewed Zangara in depth and concluded he was not part of any larger terrorist plot, and that he had been shooting at Roosevelt. All major historians agree with Moley. Nevertheless some conspiracy theories in Chicago at the time to the effect that Zangara was a hitman hired by Chicago Outfit boss Frank Nitti as a diversion for a second shooter -- who never fired a shot and was never seen -- to shoot Mayor Cermak, a mortal enemy of the Chicago Mob, instead of President Roosevelt. Zangara had been known as one of the Italian Army's best marksmen before coming to the United States, leading to speculation that Cermak had been the intended target after all..[1]
[edit] In popular culture
Zangara is one of the assassins portrayed in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's musical Assassins. The song describing his attempted assassination, "How I Saved Roosevelt", takes many of its lyrics directly from Zangara's final words in the electric chair, and ends with his electrocution.
In Philip K. Dick's Hugo award winning Man in the High Castle and Jack Womack's Terraplane alternate history novels, Zangara successfully assassinates Roosevelt. In both novels, this has the result of raising John Nance Garner to political power, ensuring that his fiscal conservatism delays recovery from the Depression. In Man in the High Castle, this results in reduced military capabilities, so that Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire win the Second World War, while in Terraplane, the Second World War ends inconclusively, with the survival of Nazi Germany under Albert Speer as Chancellor, apart from the defeat of Imperial Japan through the use of fourteen nuclear weapons against the Home Islands.
[edit] References
- Davis, Kenneth S. FDR: The New York Years: 1928-1933 (1994)
- Freidel, Frank. Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Triumph (1956)
- Picchi, Blaise. The Five Weeks of Giuseppe Zangara: The Man Who Would Assassinate FDR (1998)
- Shappee, Nathan D. "Zangara's Attempted Assassination of Franklin D. Roosevelt" Florida Historical Quarterly 1958 37(2): 101-110. argues he was insane
- FDR shooting attempt in Miami to be retold, Luisa Yanez, The Miami Herald, 2007-09-20. Accessed 2007-09-20
- [1] Sifakis, Carl (1987). The Mafia Encyclopedia. New York City: Facts on File. ISBN 0816018561
