That's a good way of putting it, yeah. Humanity tends to view things in shades of black and white - NO conflict in history has EVER been an isolated insolent; these things have context, but context is boring. Even in history class, you rarely learn the context - it's all stripped down to the stuff that society finds it useful for you to know. The rest you have to find out for yourselves - and most people don't bother.
'So what's all this WW2 business about, then?'
'Uh, well, there was this guy named Hitler, see, and he was the leader of Germany and the Nazis, who took over half of Europe before he was stopped and systematically slaughtered millions of Jews and other minorities...'
'Good god! Those bastards!'
'Well, yeah, but it's not quite as simple as that; you see, in the FIRST...'