And by far the biggest imperialists of the war were the British. They couldn't have fed or clothed themselves or resisted the Nazis without their colonies and commonwealth. So, why is World War II so important? Well, first, it proved the old Roman adage, homo homini lupus, man is a wolf to man. This is seen most clearly in the Holocaust, but all the statistics are staggering. More than a million Indian British subjects died, mainly due to famine that could have been avoided if the British had redistributed food. And their failure to do so helped convince Indians that the so-called superior civilization of the British was a sham.