You hear phrases like "the good war," or "necessary war," thrown around a lot that seem to glorify it and set it apart in our memories. Is this a fair practice? Was WWII really as a unique conflict in any way besides its enormous geographic scale?

If we're speaking purely off the public perception of it, of course. This has been colored a lot by post-facto revelations about just how heinous the German regime truly was, of course.

The uniqueness isn't the scale of the front, but rather the intensity over such a significant length of time. World War II was a war of firsts and precedent-setting; the largest Amphibious Invasion ever launched, the first Naval battle ever fought in which the belligerents never physically saw one another, the largest land-invasion in Human history, etc.

What also makes WWII unique, especially on the Eastern Front, was the unprecedented barbarity seen between belligerents. The racial nature of Wehrmacht indoctrination created a war as much as it was for "living space" and oil as it was for the realization of a twisted ideal. The idea of not just nations, but cultures being unequivocally at stake is something incredibly unique.

The actual scale and intensity of battle, politics and propaganda seen in WWII is something that will hopefully never be seen again in human history.