I think China is a country on a track of rapid development, which makes Chinese the most popular language in the world, so learning Chinese is your best choice.
Chinese is not that hard to start with, the grammar is straightforward, similar to English and because it is a language business and exchange it uses the simplest grammar for everyday tasks. Korean and Japanese have a grammar structure that is very different from English and require lots of words to be polite. Korean writing is the easiest to learn (2 weeks to learn it), Japanese is hard (2 years) and Chinese...20 years.
But basically here is the rule, no language is hard to learn, it just takes a long time. Which means you can only learn a language if you want to learn it.
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.