How has my world view changed after the study of World War II?
By: Nicholas

Before I studied World War II, I just thought that World War II was just a minor war where we just dropped some bombs on Japan, fought through D-Day, and then it was over. I had no idea at all how much fight the Nazis and Japanese had in them. I   thought  that with a large war, the evil Nazis would realize that what they were doing was wrong. Now I really know that there will always be power hungry egomaniacs running around trying to take over. I hope that World War II will be an example to those power hungry people that the world in general will not put up with someone trying to create a "perfect" race and take over. The chances are slim, at least I think so, that I will not have to live through a war. I have probably sixty years at least for some maniac to try.

When we started learning about World War II, we were learning the reasons it started. Germany had to pay restitutions for World War I, and had to take the blame. All it took was a charismatic leader to take the whole population into a greedy frenzy that would end up with most of them dead. Hitler wanted to take over the world and make it "perfect" which more or less meant that he wanted only Germans.

When we learned about what he did to the Jews, making laws and killing, it made you want to scream, "Oh, the humanity!" All this evil, and it took off because the free world didn’t want to create a problem. They didn’t see that it was time to fight the Germans until it was too late and Hitler was already powerful and the Jews were already being treated terriblely. When you learn about all the people that died in the war, you wonder why it all happened.

After studying what later happened to the Jews, being in Nazi death camps, you feel more than sorrow. All the battles, all the death, and all because one person wanted to take over the world. When you study what the Germans did on a daily basis, you find it’s scary. Hitler kept everyone in the dark, burning books and taking intellectuals and others to concentration camps just so people won’t know what’s going on, with the ones that do out of the way, then you know why everyone went with the flow. There weren’t too many that did know what was going on, and the ones that did were in concentration camps or too scared to talk. When you learn about how Hitler wanted the battles to be fought, you wonder if he was insane. He told them not to retreat, not to surrender, and eventually he would take over the military. He just wanted more power, which ended up with more death and destruction.

My world view has definitely changed dramatically. I now know that however you think of war, it is not something adventurous or exciting, unless you consider seeing young boys being killed glamorous. I know that you don’t want any more wars like that. You can just be a peace person, trying to talk it out and all, but let’s face it, Hitler would not have been talked out of taking over the world.