Helping with grades is really not the responsibility of a friend. Your friends parents should be helping out. Concern yourself with your own grades.
If you try to help your friend in this way, you will just get dragged down.
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.