FBI File: Giuseppe Zangara's Attempt to Kill FDR
While doing some fact-checking for Pulp Guns, a set of pulp-novel sourcebooks for the GURPS roleplaying game, I found the FBI file on Giuseppe Zangara's failed attempt to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
After Roosevelt spoke at a Miami park on Feb. 15, 1933, Zangara fired several shots with a cheap .32-caliber pistol as he was perched on a wobbly bench. He missed the president-elect but hit others, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died from his wounds 19 days later.
Zangara, a 32-year-old Italian bricklayer with mental health problems driven by chronic abdominal pain, was caught and immediately confessed. He told police, "I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists." The FBI file contains a transcript of his interview by Dade County Sheriff Dan Hardie (pictured here with Zangara), which includes this exchange:
Hardie: Where did you buy pistol?
Zangara: In a store.
Hardie: What store -- where?
Zangara: On Miami avenue.
Hardie: What kind of store?
Zangara: Loan [unreadable]
Hardie: Money to loan?
Zangara: Yes.
...
Hardie: In the store where you bought the pistol -- was he a Jew?
Zangara: Yes.
Hardie: Did you tell him why you bought the pistol?
Zangara: No.
Hardie: Did he ask you why you bought it?
Zangara: No, he got the money. That's all he wanted.
Hardie: How much did you pay for it?
Zangara: Eight dollars, he said and I gave it to him.
The transcript doesn't explain the motivation for Sheriff Hardie's "was he a Jew?" question, stark prejudice that stands out in the 75-year-old document. American anti-Jewish sentiment was growing in the 1930s, led by figures as prominent as automaker Henry Ford and broadcaster Father Coughlin. I guess Hardie thought the Jews might be working with the I-talians, since there's nothing secret banking cabals want more than killing all capitalists.
Today, of course, Americans don't ensure the safety of our homeland with dogged vigilance against a worldwide conspiracy of Jews. Such suspicions are laughable and hateful.
We have a better question: Was he a Muslim?
Comments
I generally really like your blog but that last line is crap.
Rogers logics, "Today, of course, Americans don't ensure the safety of our homeland with dogged vigilance against a worldwide conspiracy of Jews. Such suspicions are laughable and hateful. We have a better question: Was he a Muslim?"
Your sarcasm is labyrinthian. What nation on Earth does not find some minority who are prejudiced against Jews? "Americans" did not ensure the safety of the homeland by instituting a pogrom against Jews. Indeed, the Jews of America were respected and protected by the constitution and laws of the USA, unlike *most* other nations where attacks against them were ignored, in the main. Judaism had not declared war on the USA, and had not attacked it at home and abroad -- Islam did!
You can argue, along with the other apologists for Islam, that the religion is not at fault for the use of terrorism by a minority of Muslims; that there are millions who are not terrorists and live in peace with their neighbors ...
Where? Where is this utopia where Islam is the lamb and the society they live in is the lion?
Where are the Islamic cries against the use of terrorism that match the urging of the Mullahs to genocide, war and murder using human sacrifice? They are non-existent! 99% of Islam remains silent ... if they are not dancing in the streets over some murder or human sacrifice against their enemy: Jews and the USA!
You have studied, in this instance for an hour or more, to belittle the United States via some historical report where Jews were NOT scapegoated as responsible for the attack against Roosevelt, however prejudiced the fascist investigator, in American's clothing, was in questioning Zangara. Zangara looks to be a communist; a socialist of Italian extraction and background. Perhaps the investigator wanted to misdirect any thought that Zangara represented Italian fascism, or the newly rising Nazi socialism of Germany?
At any rate, why support Islam at the expense of America's reputation, grown to such exaggerated proportions for what motive? Can you so easily ignore who this war is being fought against, and the near monolithic support of the Islamic community for their effort; dancing in the streets and cheering when terror and human sacrifice are practiced in the name of Allah and his prophet Muhammed ... ?
Is this some cryptic effort to support the Democratics against Republicans ... ?
Judaism had not declared war on the USA, and had not attacked it at home and abroad -- Islam did!
That's exactly the sentiment I was talking about. The religion of Islam did not declare war on the United States. There are one billion Muslims in the world and 1.5 million living in this country. They are no more responsible for the terror attacks committed by a small number of extremists than the Roman Catholic Church is for Tim McVeigh. It's wrong to scapegoat them, just as it was wrong to scapegoat Jews in the '30s and round up Japanese-Americans during World War II.
Rogers says, "The religion of Islam did not declare war on the United States."
You state the obvious, and while ignoring the same.
I've already explained that "Islam" does not renounce the use of human sacrifice to advance its hegemony; at least 99% remain studiously silent in the face of their Mullahs slicing the hearts, lungs, spleens, arms and legs from the victims of that bloody sacrifice to Allah and the prophet Muhammed. Their stone-age rule of laws -- Sharia -- is anathema to any concept of "progressive society", yet you defend them and their hand-removing, woman-stoning, death-to-homosexual efforts to extend that rule-of-law around the world ... and here, where you display some misguided zeal to be politically correct in the face of a monolithic majority of stone-age attitudes!
"There are one billion Muslims in the world and 1.5 million living in this country. They are no more responsible for the terror attacks committed by a small number of extremists than the Roman Catholic Church is for Tim McVeigh."
I'll repeat: Their Silence is Deafening!, in the face of efforts to use their religion as a political tool. On the other hand, I'm sure that their silence is based on the same fear as the terrorists, self-proclaimed sacrificers in the name of Islam, try to instill in the faint of heart, and those who try and use it to their poltical advantage; those who will try to accommodate their religious emphasis on establishing their power IN ITS ULTIMATE IN NEOLITHIC CONSERVATISM. internationally.
"It's wrong to scapegoat them, just as it was wrong to scapegoat Jews in the '30s and round up Japanese-Americans during World War II."
It is a necessity of the moment, a freedom willingly given up in order to defend this nation and our (really) ultimate rule of law and the freedom it represents to all the world: Muslim, Buddhist and every religion equally. It is the reality of republican, limited, representative democracy, and since the vast majority of the US population felt more secure with that intenment, and therefore more prepared to defeat our ultimate enemy for survival.
If anything, the internment was a vilification of unlimited democracy, than it was some sort of evil ...
No one, no nation from the West has denied the Arab nations, or Islam, their freedom. Instead, it is Islam, in their vocal majority, who are calling for genocide and cheering the use of human sacrifice to advance their SUPPOSED religious goals ...
... you defend their silence in the face of those who use human sacrifice to Allah .... their cowardice in the face of tyranny and the rule of force is obvious ... is yours ... ?
And since when do Muslims partake in human sacrifice?
Did the word "sugartits" appear anywhere in that transcript?
A friend of mine with a young son, about 5 or 6 I would guess, said his son was trying to come up with a silly name to call another kid and ended up with "sugarpenis." And he's never even heard of Mel Gibson.
Aside from muslims killing Ghandi, and attempting to kill John Paul the 2nd, bombing the USS Cole, then attempt on the WTC in the early 90s, then the destruction of it, the bombing of our embassies, the repeated bus bombings in Israel, the incessant mortar attacks on Israel, the bombing of airplanes, hijacking ships, beheadings, killing of 250 Marines in Beirut, holding our people hostage for 444 days in Iran, battalions of muslim-only troops under hitler, and the constant harassment of the holy land for 400 years prompting the crusades....
WHAT have muslims ever done do deserve that last comment?
Yes, I am a baffled liberal, why do you ask?
Wow. There are lot's of people with the middle mEast on the brain.
What's intersting o me is that Zangara put kings, presidents and capitalists into the same category. It harkens back to FDR's first campaign fo president when he ran as a conservative out to end the socialist programs of Hoover.
Lets not forget 9/11
I'm disappointed in the potential confusion this post sets up for future generations, who will no doubt turn to the net for their information. Presenting someone as a racist demands, perhaps, deeper investigation.
First of all, of the 4 loan shops on Miami Avenue (at that time) only one was owned by a Jew. One was owned by a Conch, and the other two by Irishmen. It was 1933 and things have changed, but you may be reading too much into it.
Also, to be fair, Zangara's English was very limited -- as was the Sheriff's Italian. What you're reading here is a transcript of what must have been a very difficult conversation, following a presidential assassination attempt and attempted lynching of the suspect. I don't believe there's any mention of a Jewish Conspiracy in the FBI transcripts.
As for your final question, I'm not sure how deep your investigations for the video game are taking you, but as a direct descendant of Sheriff Dan Hardie, I can be of some help: He was not a Muslim.
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