Striking martial art, grappling martial art, self defense martial art etc?

Judo is great for self defense when taught correctly. Most school teach it today for sport instead of self defense. Even as a sport it can be used for self defense.

What you saw at the Olympics was it being used as a sport. But the person on the street if they got into a close enough range to be grabbed or touched by a judoka would be in a lot of trouble very quickly. They would hit the hard ground very fast and hard.

Most people do not know how to fall safely. After hitting the ground a well trained judoka knows how to injure a person using a variety of joint locks. They are also skilled at choking out a person.

In fact a well trained judoka doesn't have to throw you. They can apply a joint lock or choke without throwing. Edit: Mark's statement about judo made me add this.

Yes in judo competition your objective is not to injure someone and to be safe. We have mats or tatami to cushion our falls and reduce the opportunities for injuries. However, injuries do occur.

Back in about 84 a guy from my judo dojo was competing against a 2nd Dan (black belt). My fried was a green belt at the time. He threw the black belt and the guy wasn't able to get up.

The ambulance came. Later we learned that his collarbone was broken from the impact. Another friend from our school went to a mall to shop.

We were teens at the time. He saw a man abusing his girlfriend. He told the guy to stop.

The guy came after him. He then threw the guy with a technique learned in class. The guy went through the windshield of his corvette.

He pressed charges on my friend and was filing a lawsuit for damages to the car. He later dropped the charges because his girlfriend told him if he didn't drop them she would have him charge for abusing her. My friend would have been her star witness along with her bruises.

He used his training to stop another person from being harmed and to defend himself.

Judo traditionally had a pretty strong self-defense aspect. Escapes, damaging holds, defenses against various attacks, even weapons use (usually only taught to higher ranks). As noted, the type of judo practiced in Olympic competition is pretty formalized.

However, all the classic techniques can be used to good effect. For instance, in competition, when one throws one's opponent one tries to avoid injury to the other player by "directing" him to fall squarely on his back. In a fight, it's easy enough to control the opponent's fall so that he lands on his shoulder, with an excellent chance of breaking a collarbone.....

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.