The fundamental problem is that you're fill limited which is the GPUs inability to shade all the fragments you ask it to draw in the time you're expecting. The reason that you're depth buffering trick isn't effective is that the most time-comsuming part of processing is shading the fragments (either through your own fragment shader, or through the fixed-function shading engine), which occurs before the depth test. The same issue occurs for using stencil; shading the pixel occurs before stenciling.
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.