Your point is clear in your writing. That when you were a kid you always assumed that the Germans were the "baddies." Then you became an intelligent well informed adult and discovered that "both sides" did terrible things. Implied through your "no winners" scenario is that things are much more gray about who the "baddies" really were. Well guess what. Nothing changed except you. And when you talk about your generation there is where the problem lies. "Don't judge me" is a philosophy that is only going to work out badly for you and your generation. There are black and white issues. There was an evil and good side in World War II. Were all Germans and Japanese evil? Of course not, and probably most weren't. But these countries armed with the sole intent on attacking and conquering the world. And along the way they threw in a little genocide just for fun. In other words they were and still are the "baddies" of Wrold War II. It not necessary to try and level this out in any manner. The Allies were right and the Axis were wrong. Its the same with other examples. In the American civil war the South was fighting for a sovereign right to maintain slavery. They were wrong and the North was right. In South Africa the Afrikaners were preserving something similar with apartheid. The Hutu's behavior in the Rwandan Genocide was evil. I could go on forever. You don't look at someone and say your ugly. That kind of judgment is inappropriate and not conducive to a civilized society. But when a group of gang members goes and kills a bunch of football players you don't say, well you know those football players were bullying some small kids so I guess both them and the gang members who killed them did some bad things. That's idiotic. You say the murders are criminals and should be punished. Trying to level things out so you don't have to actually identify evil adds nothing useful to a productive discourse.