Remembering the Battle of Teutoburg Forest

While savoring his Venezuelan Triumph, President Trump should pause for a moment to contemplate the Varian Disaster that shocked the Roman Emperor Augustus to his core.

The German chieftain Arminius was a prince of the Roman-friendly Cherusci tribe. To make sure that the Cherusci remained friendly, the Romans took him hostage when he was a boy, educated him in Rome, and then sent him back to Germania with the Roman politician and general, Publius Quinctilius Varus, who was tasked with completing the Roman conquest of the country and its tribes.

From his close observation of the Romans, and Varus in particular, Arminius had privately come to the conclusion that—for all of their talk about civilization, law, and citizenship—they were a rapacious, exploitative, and tyrannical bunch. In Arminius’s estimate, Varus was little more than a glorified tax collector.

And so, in the year 9 AD, Arminius set about forming a secret, rebel alliance of German tribes to set a trap for Varus’s 17th, 18th, and 19th Legions. Under normal circumstances, these tribes and their leaders were fractious and uncooperative, but in 9 AD, their uniform resentment of Varus brought them happily together.

Arminius’s plot was extraordinarily effective. Falling for a ruse de guerre, Varus (a lawyer who grossly overestimated his military acumen) and his legions pressed deep into unfamiliar terrain (now in Lower Saxony), where they were ambushed and totally destroyed—all three legions wiped out to a man in the most brutal conceivable way.

Total Disaster in the Teuotoburg Forest, 9 A.D.

When the Emperor Augustus received word of the defeat, he is said to have temporarily lost possession of his senses. All three legions totally destroyed? How was it possible?

The “Varian Disaster” was a demoralizing blow, prompting the Romans to abandon their ambition of conquering Germania. Nevertheless, the Romans—with their vastly superior organization—continued to rule much of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East for centuries to come.

The German tribes, on the other hand, went back to their fractious ways. Just twelve years after his great triumph at the Teutoburg Forest, Arminius was murdered by rivals in his own tribe .

Nevertheless, I believe that a valuable lesson can be learned from the Varian Disaster—namely, a people should never let triumphs like the one that Trump just enjoyed in Venezuela go to their heads.

Given President Trump’s own experience with a Kangaroo Court in New York in 2024, there’s a certain weird irony in Maduro being hauled back to the States to stand before a federal court in New York. I’m sure he’ll get a fair trial!

The story reminds me of the Gallic leader Vercingetorix during Julius Caesar's triumph in 46 BC, who was paraded through Rome in shackles to the exultation of the plebs before being ceremonially executed. Most plebs in the city lived in the Subura slum and subsisted on the grain dole, but the humiliation of the recalcitrant Vercingetorix gave them great satisfaction and pride in being Roman. And boy did it elevate Caesar’s status!

A notably cool head in Rome at the time—Marcus Tullius Cicero—perceived that Caesar’s Gallic Triumph would certainly go to his head. He viewed Caesar as a dangerous figure who was willing to disregard established laws and norms to gain power. I don’t know if Cicero’s perceptions of Caesar are applicable to President Trump, but I’m a bit concerned that they are.

If you get angry when you read this column and reach for your keyboard to fire off a comment, please take a moment to contemplate at least the possibility that cooler heads in the past—though lacking celebratory cheer and humor—have kept this country out of harm’s way.

I am thinking about President Kennedy’s rejection of the advice of Air Force General Curtis LeMay, who advocated immediate military attack of the Russian missile bases in Cuba in October 1962. Kennedy and his brother Robert chose a more cautious approach, and quietly negotiated the withdraw of the Soviet missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. withdrawing its missiles from Turkey.

I hope that President Trump will limit his imperial ambitions to low hanging fruit like Venezuela, and not let his triumph lull him into thinking he can take on Russia. This was the fatal error made by Napoleon in 1812 and Hitler in 1941.

I know, I know, the U.S. isn’t like the great powers of the past. We are utterly unique in our brilliant technological prowess, and no one on earth could ever touch us. We are invincible. As Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) recently put it in a Fox Business interview about his plan to wrest Greenland from Denmark:

It’s important that we have a stake in Greenland, that they are, quite frankly, a protectorate of the United States. You know, they’ve been in... a relationship with Denmark, that needs to end... When you look at the Monroe Doctrine, you look at the Western hemisphere, we are the dominant predator, quite frankly, force in the Western hemisphere.

Yes, we are the apex predator. All of mankind, including Denmark (!) may now behold the sublime majesty of our might. As Ben Shapiro recently put it, “There is no such thing as international law. It is nonsense.” The law of the jungle now prevails, and the Rampant Lion of the United States will, if resisted, display the awesome firepower of its fully armed and operational military. (Author’s note: I write this in a tone of playful irony).

In all seriousness: Till his dying day, the Emperor Augustus was confounded by the question: “How did the German boy Armenius succeed in totally annihilating three Roman legions? How was it even possible?”