It was towards evening on December 2, 1805 when Napoleon walked the battlefield on the Pratzberg near Austerlitz.

The French troops won the battle.

Napoleon was allowed to feel like a radiant winner.

"Voilà une belle mort" ("Look, a beautiful death"), Napoleon exclaimed when he saw Prince Andrey lying on his back.

Andrei, an officer in the service of the Russian army, understood that the Frenchman apparently thought he was dead.

In truth, he was badly wounded but alive.

His head burned;

he felt himself losing blood, and he saw above him the high and eternal sky.

Andrei had realized that it was Napoleon standing before him - the hero of his youth.

But at that moment Napoleon seemed such a small, insignificant man compared to

Rainer Hank

Freelance author in the business section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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The encounter between Napoleon and the Russian prince Andrei is famous.

The disenchantment of the war hero is described at the moment of his greatest triumph.

It is in the 19th chapter of Lew Tolstoy's 3rd book “War and Peace”.

The victor shrinks to insignificance in the eyes of the vanquished.

In the pandemic I started reading Tolstoy.

I had no idea that the topic of war and peace would soon be a reality.

Napoleon, as Tolstoy describes him, is a case in point of the strongman.

He considers himself the greatest commander of all, the victories confirm him - and cause him to underestimate the risks of his world domination fantasy and ultimately fail.

Transfigured to the savior

In his fantasies of grandeur, Vladimir Putin also considers himself invincible.

He declares himself the savior of the Russian Empire, which he must protect from the “fascist” Ukrainians and the decadence of the West.

He surrounds himself with men he trusts, who tell him what he wants to hear.

The world, not least the Germans, is afraid of Putin.

But his power is beginning to crumble and his size is shrinking, not just since he started this murderous war.

Strongman Syndrome is a medical term.

Roughly speaking, it is a self-image disorder in men (“muscular dysmorphia”) who are trapped by the obsession that their bodies are not sufficiently muscular (“Adonis complex”).

They dope themselves with muscle building supplements and eat poorly because they constantly have to prove to those around them what an athletic man they are.

In a 2011 interview with the US magazine “Outdoor Life”, Putin parried the accusation that it was obscene to pose shirtless on horseback or while fishing by acknowledging that Ernest Hemingway was a model of exposed masculinity, who showed his “inner self”.

I am less concerned here with the psychology of masculinity and more with the threat to Western liberalism from autocrats behaving in a democratic manner.

The central conflict of our world no longer revolves around the opposition between capitalism and socialism.

The new line of conflict separates “liberal democracies” from “illiberal democracies”.

Illiberal democracies disregard the rule of law and embrace populism and nationalism.

In a striking number of cases, illiberal regimes are headed by a powerful leader.