People telling you to "just convert" obviously know absolutely nothing about Judaism- a conversion to one of the liberal branches takes around 6 months to a year- converting to Orthodox a minimum of 2 years! What you should do, is contact the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs and ask them- they will be able to tell you how to go about volunteering and all the programmes available.
Convert before you join but it don't mean you are really jewish just lie but you must convert first good luck man and I respect you for trying to serve in our military...
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.