"They knew that in its representation to the laity, what was happening to them was systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied."

The author seems to have little understanding of how much this was true of World War 1, or probably every large scale war ever. The home audiences for news reports in World War 1 (in pretty much every country) were not allowed to know how FUBB'd things were, and it was only after the war ended and troops went back home that the word partially got out. There were governments that did not let troops go on home leave for long periods because they didn't want them talking to the civilian population.

I don't think this was something unique about World War 2.