Thumbnail creation of reasonable filesize for web application?

The bitmap format is your main problem. This will always be huge by comparison with other formats. Bitmaps are run-length-encoded and uncompressed.

This sounds like you're using no compression or a very weak one (like RLE). Try PNG, JPG (or JPG2000 which can be lossless) or GIF.

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.