Civil Engineering is mostly design work of infrastructure such as bridges, buildings and tunnels. There are many subcategories in civil engineering such as geotechnical, structural, enviromental, resevoir to name just a few. You will mostly be learning maths in your first year then start looking at designs and thinking up solutions or studying cases related to optimum designs for a given problem.
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.