Who else thinks all religious people should study the history of their religion first?

We don't know, since we can be sure that religions existed long before man was able to write anything down about them. Most likely, as human beings became thinking, reasoning human beings, they reasoned that certain natural phenomena must be caused by great and powerful beings of some sort, or that those phenomena were themselves great and powerful beings in some way. Propitiating them for the sake of self-protection, for some advantage, would have been a logical step.

Fire and storms and floods were frightening. Perhaps you needed to offer the thunder or the fire or the river god something to keep him away, to keep him from harming you. Perhaps you needed to offer the animal spirits something so your next hunt would be good.

That's surely how religion began.

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.