plot explanation - Why does Don Corleone give in so easily in The Godfather? - Movies & TV

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One of the last acts of Don Corleone
as Godfather is to bring back the peace by calling for a meeting of the five families.
You can watch the scene rel="noreferrer">here.

Corleone
makes the case for why narcotics are something he wants to stay out of. Then another guy
stands up and makes the case for narcotics. Corleone says he came there to reason and
find the peace, and Barzini declares that the narcotics trade will commence despite what
Corleone wants, and that Corleone will give up a lot of his power. Corleone gives a
monologue where he doesn't seem to say much, and then just like that it's
over.

Why did he give in so easily? He didn't
even seem to put up a fight or to argue his case. I don't understand why he felt it was
necessary to give Barzini and Tattaglia and his other enemies exactly what they wanted
just to keep the peace. Surely they all wanted peace as well. Yet it seems like Don
Corleone just got slapped in the face at the meeting.

Answer

For Don Corleone, there were certain red
lines you don't cross, and poisoning the people of your neighborhood with drugs was one
of those red lines. It also didn't help that Sonny spoke up at the meeting the way he
did. Essentially, Don Corleone realized that he had no leverage left among the other
dons - they knew not only what his position was, but also who they could potentially
exploit to get around that.

Spoiler ahead for further
explanation:

Had Carlo not had Sonny killed in the tollbooth, it's entirely possible Sonny
would have been convinced to go along with dealing drugs, even after the attempt on Don
Corleone's life. Michael was the one wild card none of the other families knew what to
make of him; as far as they were concerned, he was either weak like Fredo or just a
simple civilian. That was what allowed them to think they could fool him into sitting
down with a meeting with Barzini at the end of the film - they just didn't know that Don
Corleone had warned him about that possibility before he
died.