Sauron vs Voldemort

[secretbison]

Comparing the physical power and resources of Sauron and Voldemort is irrelevant, because neither can be permanently killed through direct bodily harm. They can only be defeated by understanding, finding and destroying the MacGuffins connected to their backstory. To kill Voldemort, you have to identify, find and destroy all his Horcruces. To kill Sauron, you have to find the One Ring, take it to Mount Doom, overcome its temptation (This is the big one, as it’s implied that this is literally impossible,) and throw it in the fire.

Where are these two going to meet? If one is meeting the other on his home turf, the invader will be unstoppable. If the One Ring is in Middle-earth, and you have no way of getting to Middle-earth, then Sauron can harass you indefinitely. The same is true of Voldemort and modern Earth.

If each contender can use his magic to travel to the other’s home turf, things become more interesting. Then it becomes a matter of how much each contender knows, or can learn through magic, about the other’s MacGuffin. It seems more likely that Sauron can read Voldemort’s mind than the other way around. And anyway, Sauron doesn't know where the Ring is, so mind reading would be of no use there. Furthermore, if Voldemort gains an incomplete understanding of the Ring, or even of a palantir, he’s likely to use it without understanding the risk and fall under Sauron’s control. This is more likely than it sounds – not only is Voldemort an idiot, but even some relatively smart people in Middle-Earth imagine that they can control the Ring. Even Gandalf, who knows as much as anyone about the rules of the story he's in, refuses to bear the ring because he knows he'd use it.

The only advantage Voldemort has in the arena of information warfare is the fact that books about Sauron exist in Voldemort’s world, and not the other way around. If Voldemort is clever enough to read The Lord of the Rings before engaging Sauron (unlikely as he may be to read muggle books when he won’t even deign to use the most deadly muggle weapons,) he might have a fighting chance.

However, both Sauron and Voldemort share the stereotypical villain’s flaw – they are incapable of lateral thinking. They both believe that any problem can be solved by throwing enough force at it, and they can’t imagine that the plans they’ve contrived to keep themselves in power might be circumvented. This means that they probably won’t even bother learning about each other’s weaknesses, and the fight will probably result in a draw. Sauron will keep throwing orcs and other monsters at Voldemort, and Voldemort and his Death Eaters will keep killing them, ad infinitum or until some outside force ends the fight.

So, it's a draw!