EE on WWII

[cjp222]

I am about to start my Extended Essay. I want to write about WWII. I was thinking about exploring the causes of WWII and the reasons for fighting. My question was going to be like "was WWII a war of ethics(ones that each respective country wanted to stress throughout the world), prestige(image, reputation, power, influence), or of ideological reasons(religion, nationalism, race, politics)?"

I was planning on trying to identify the war as one of those three, and exploring each side to prove my point. What do you think? Do you think this could be made better? or do you see any problems that could arise if I were to take this on? Please let me know, the final draft is due in a month! oh and thank you for any help!

[sweetnsimple786]

I think that your topic is too broad and 4000 words wouldn't do it justice. If you talked about each of those causes and subcauses associated with them and a couple of contries on both sides to support yourself, you couldn't get very in-depth. You could perhaps do one of those reasons and analyze how loyal the countries stayed to it.

P.S. I really think your three categories significantly overlap. Maybe you could take something like wanting influence and show the ethical, reputation, and ideological sides to it? Or a reason a specific country entered the war and then track how true it stayed to this reason through the war and maybe even immediately after the war.

[deissi]

Right, I'm going to have to go with sweetnsimple786 here. If you write about the topic you are suggesting above, your EE will not score anything higher than an E. It is far too broad and no historian could ever answer such a question conclusively in 4000 words. Writing about WWII in general is next-to-impossible in an EE, you will have to look at a very specific thing about the war and analyze one (or two) impacts or causes. Back to the drawing table, I'm afraid!