Contrary to what we know, Napoleon’s final moment didn’t come at Waterloo; it came in Moscow, Russia, a year before. Hitler’s end didn’t come when he killed himself in the Berlin bunker; it came three years before in Stalingrad, Russia. Donald Trump, our sitting president and the leader of the free world, who holds the fate of his nation and the world in his hands with powers greater than Napoleon’s and Hitler’s combined, is facing his own political end: On Nov. 3, he will either meet his Moscow and Stalingrad and lose everything he cherishes or will cement his name in history as the greatest conqueror of the world.
Let’s backtrack.
In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had conquered all of Europe, decided to punish Russia for its refusal to cooperate with France on sanctioning England. He amassed an army (the Grande Armée) of 650,000 men for the task, the largest force of arms the world had ever seen. Recognizing that they could not beat Napoleon head-on, the Russians adopted a scorched-earth strategy that left no food or quarters for the victorious French army. As Napoleon entered Moscow, nothing and nobody greeted the conquering army. After occupying Moscow for a month, hungry and cold with winter approaching, Napoleon finally decided to retreat from Moscow and go home. Then the skies fell on Napoleon and his grand army: Russians, who had been waiting for such a moment, attacked the grand army from the rear. Out of 650,000 men, fewer than 100,000 managed to survive the retreat, massacre, disease, and starvation. Subsequently, Napoleon, stripped of his power as emperor of the French and imprisoned on the island of Elba, saw his reign in Europe end.
One hundred and thirty years later, in 1941, Adolf Hitler, then the all-powerful conqueror of Europe (only England remaining “unNazified”) almost equal in reputation and ambition to Napoleon, decided to invade Russia. After a string of victories, however, his vanity got his victorious military bogged down in Stalingrad, an industrial city, named after the then-Russian leader Joseph Stalin but otherwise negligible in military value. Hitler wanted to conquer Stalin’s namesake for its propaganda value (“Hitler takes Stalin-grad”); and for the opposite reason, Stalin wanted to prevent Stalingrad’s fall to the Nazis. A titanic battle for the city, between Hitler’s 500,000-strong army (the Sixth Army and the Panzer Division) and Stalin’s battered-but-resilient Soviets, ensued. With the two equally desperate armies locked in a do-or-die battle, the tide soon turned in favor of Russia, which encircled and destroyed Hitler’s never-before-defeated military juggernaut. Out of the 500,000 men who fought in Stalingrad, only 5,000 managed to survive the frostbite, starvation, disease, bullets and prison camps. Germany’s defeat in Stalingrad was the beginning of the end for Hitler, who three years later with the Red Army practically knocking on the door, shot himself and his new wife, thus ending the Nazi era in Europe.
Eighty years after Hitler died by suicide, President Donald Trump is facing his own moment of truth at the midterm election in the United States in 2026. There has never been a national event in American history more pivotal for Trump the person and America the nation than the upcoming November midterm elections. If he loses his majority in the House and the Senate, his whole political fate — just like Napoleon’s and Hitler’s before him — will be sealed.
Neither Napoleon nor Hitler had Plan B to save their necks: Overconfident in their power and hubris, they gambled and lost, though to begin with the odds were heavily in their favor. Nor does our sitting president have Plan B, such as fading into the sunset as an elder statesman or into comfortable posterity. If he loses and Democrats win on Nov. 3, the consequences will instantly be as catastrophic for Trump as they were for Napoleon retreating from Moscow and Hitler’s army being massacred in Stalingrad. If he wins, his power lives forever and his presidency, his money, his lifestyle, his tanning lamp, his wig, everything that symbolizes Donald Trump and his unlimited power, avarice and stupidity will be etched forever in what promises to be Trump’s America. What if he loses?
Trump simply cannot lose. What is awaiting him if he loses his power after Nov. 3 is not pretty. We don’t have enough space here to list the things he has done to activate the long arms of avenging Democrats. As losers, there will be no retirement for Trump and his cohorts, who will be wearing orange jumpsuits with prison numbers for the rest of their lives. This, Trump simply cannot allow. Naturally, Trumpsters, with all the instruments of power in their hands, are working feverishly day and night, summoning every available resource, to save their leader from repeating the fate of Napoleon and Hitler, come Nov. 3.
We ask: Why would the sitting president with near-absolute power let the midterm election determine his fate when he can simply damn the election, close it down, and strike the date from the calendar?
The best solution for him, as it’s so plain to see, is to prevent Nov. 3 from ever coming to America: Declaring martial law and letting the army take over America, in the name of its commander in chief, seems high on his strategic plan — just for the simplicity of its execution: Easy, quick, and foolproof.
The only price is that everything we’ve known as “liberal America,” “citadel of democracy,” “shining city on a hill,” etc., etc., will never come back, amid unimaginable civil war and chaos that will be America’s Armageddon.
But Trump will survive, even flourish, thereafter.
Jon Huer, retired professor and columnist for the Recorder, lives in Greenfield and writes for posterity.