harry potter - Would Voldemort have won the first Wizarding War?

Looking at everyone's chances, it looks like the OotP and the Aurors had the odds stacked against them. Did the OotP have any chance of defeating Voldemort, either by permanent restraint, or death and finding his horcruxes? Is there anything to indicate that anything but The Boy Who Lived would have stopped him?

Answer

This is correct.

Voldemort was nearly guaranteed to win:

He was effectively fighting a revolution/guerilla warfare. He personally had NO weak points (people he cared about to use as leverage, wealth/possessions to take as leverage, etc).

His only valuables were Horcruxes that nobody knew about.

OTOH, his opponents had multiple leverage points. At the last resort, hostage some Muggles. Or family members.

Individually, either Voldemort or his whole group was more magically powerful than any SMALL amount of wizards on opposite side (maybe except Dumbledore, but I don’t recall good canonical references for comparing the two before Voldemort’s first “death”). So given the low overall numbers of the opponents, with time, they would/could have eliminated them one by one, and avoided the large scale battles if those were not to their advantage (and that last isn’t guaranteed anyway).

So, eventually, they'd have won by attrition.

Comments

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