Nearly everything about reality is a “distortion” because your brain writes the “perception.”

Not always.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Grass#Waffen-SS_re...

All history is distorted. We can only learn from surviving sources (written by winners, with political agenda or simply subjectively) interpreted in whatever is the most desired way to have it interpreted at the time. A lot of evidence has been systematically destroyed.

Obviously, I'm exaggerating but there's truth in it and it takes a lot of individual studying (of not just history) to get some vague idea of what could really be going on.

For WW2, my history teacher believed that events should be considered a history only after 100 yeas have passed. Everything less will be a political narrative.