Below is a story of two men who dreamed of the same thing. The first tried and failed. The second, well aware of the mistakes of the first, unfortunately sank his ship quite the same way.

In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte was rather poorly advised to mount an attack on Russia. He had a highly trained military force with which he expected to achieve a quick and easy victory over the country.

Unfortunately, the man made some serious miscalculations. Napoleon’s army, though strong, was nearly impossible to replenish. Moreover, a part of his troops was already engaged in battle on the western front at the time. Although Russia certainly wasn’t an unbeatable nation, it had the advantages of natural resources, manpower and an unforgiving winter that only the Russians were accustomed to. To add to all this, Napoleon lacked a reliable strategic advisor to foresee these loopholes.

And so it happened that Monsieur Bonaparte hastily sent his battle-weary soldiers to war at the peak of the Russian winter and suffered a catastrophic defeat.

About a century later, Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the codename for Nazi Germany’s invasion of The Soviet Union. He knew all about Bonaparte’s efforts and was certain he could do better. Ironically, Hitler was in no situation to attack Russia at the time; he had lost his air force in the battle of Britain and Russia was on friendly terms with Germany. Moreover, Hitler’s extermination of the Jews was taking a toll on German resources and his troops were exhausted from battle. In fact, his condition was uncannily similar to that of Napoleon’s in 1812.

What he could have done was to slowly chip away Russia’s industrial strength with constant aerial bombardment and take control of the farmland. That way, Germany could easily have conquered a depleted and starved Russia in about 5 years.

But of course, Hitler was in a bit more of a hurry. In just 6 months, the German army was battered by the blizzard and stood weaker by about 830,000 men.

About 2000 years before them, a young man named Chandragupta decided to conquer the kingdom of the mighty Nanda empire. He owned no resources, no army and no political power, while Dhana Nanda, the erstwhile ruler, commanded a massive army of infantry, cavalry, chariots and war elephants. What Chandragupta did have, however, was the memory of a mother reprimanding her child over how he was eating his food. “Don’t eat your rice from the centre of the plate! You’ll burn your hand”, she said. “Start from the sides, and by the time you reach the middle, it will have gotten cold.” This is exactly how Chandragupta decided to achieve his goal. He began by conquering the edges of the kingdom, and by the time he arrived at the capital, Dhana Nanda’s forces were exhausted, and he was overthrown without struggle.

This is where the study of history comes into the picture. If there is one thing we should know, it is the fact that history tends to repeat itself. This isn’t mere coincidence, but an indication that human nature doesn’t change. Had Napoleon and Hitler brushed up on their history, things might have turned out differently for them.

The replaying of history, therefore, is an opportunity for us to correct our mistakes; to give the same story a different ending.

So let’s turn the clock back, and take a look at the story once again.