re: If Sonny Corleone doesn't get whacked, does the Corleone family win the war?

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Okay, this seems to be the thread for this.

I don’t get the sequence of events with Hyman Roth. He’s behind the very complex attempt on Michael’s life at Tahoe, but keeps begging him to do business with him in Cuba and meets with him more than once about business. That doesn’t seem to make sense to me and I’ve never really understood that whole plan.

Why constantly plan business deals with someone you’re trying to have killed? Why not just have him killed?

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In case he failed to have Michael killed? It's not such a stretch, given that's exactly what happens. By approaching Michael as a business partner, he made it difficult for Michael to act on his suspicions. Notice the convoluted path Michael took to trying to take Roth out later? Just as Roth pretended he didn't have anything to do with the attempt on Michael's life, Michael pretended he didn't suspect Roth of making such an attempt, or at least that he bought Roth's little speech about Moe Green. It's all about the facade. Like the Goodfellas line, your killers come at you as friends. These are dangerous, dangerous people and beneath the veneer lurks a lot of sociopathy. But in order for that to happen, there has to be a veneer. They play nice in the open, and do their little stratagems in secret. If all else failed, they'd at least both make out financially on the Cuban deal. Or would have were it not for Castro.