This is an excellent post. The new charge from leftists is, "You don't even know what socialism is" as if they are trying to keep it a secret. Well, it's not a secret.
The best modern laboratory for capitalism vs. socialism was Germany following World War II. It was broken into two parts - East and West. The West, a fundamentally capitalistic economic system, enjoyed a hustling, bustling modern business community, and was often thought of as the world's top producer of precision machinery and automobiles.
The East, a primarily socialistic society, couldn't produce anything but doped up female Olympians and its economy and people suffered tremendously. Any state control over the means of production or the allocation of resources is socialistic. In modern societies, this often means matters of degree.
I will stick with the Jeffersonian ideal for the United States: "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Socialism is a political system where the government owns all property and commerce and operates everything on behalf of the people. Socialism does not exist in a capitalist economy such as ours (The USA) where private people and private enterprise go about their business generating wealth and income through commerce, investment and private property and pay taxes to the government for government services. We do not redistribute wealth in this country - at least not to individuals.
We do a pretty good job of doing it to Businesses with the best lobbies. The social safety net is just that - a safety net for temporary subsistence living based only on need. It does not improve anyone's standard of living, it just keeps the bottom from falling out.
The medicare and Social Security some call socialism is not wealth redistribution as every payer is entitled to the benefits of the system. Wealth redistribution is making poorer people richer at the expense of richer people with nothing in it for the rich. Be that as it may, there are very few people advocating socialism, unless you consider the existence of any government services to be socialism.
Your definition apparently, not mine.
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.