I think you should live each day as fully and as righteously as you can so if the Mayans turn out to be correct you will have no regrets.
Everyone has their own belief's and for myself as a Christian, I believe the end of the world will come unannounced - we won't know the day or the hour.
So I would pay no heed to the world ending in 2012.
Due to the upswing in the solar storm cycle, the massive breach in the magnetosphere, the accelerating rate of change in the magnetic poles, pollution, global warming, tectonic and volcanic activity, deforestation, and many other measurable and verifiable factors, 2012 will be an unending series of natural disasters, each worse than the last. We don't need a hypothetical Nibiru and a 3,700 year orbit; we've got plenty of real problems. Suggestion: buy bottled water.
Lots of it.
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.