With so much in stories and history of Hitler, the Holocaust, The Third Reich, WWII, etc., off and on for some years I tried to understand what happened and see

With so much in stories and history of Hitler, the Holocaust, The Third Reich, WWII, etc., off and on for some years I tried to understand what happened and see if parts of the world or here (in the US) remain vulnerable to a similar disaster. There are stacks of history books and many hours of TV. I boiled it down to: (1) Authority. At one time, Germany was a battle ground with the children eating by thawing out frozen soldiers in the snow. One reaction was Prussia that became intensely 'militaristic'. Somehow that Prussian development spread over Germany and created an 'intensity' and a big respect for 'authority'. At best there are pros and cons with that direction, and somehow, on balance, Germany long went too far. (2) WWI. That was a disaster. England, France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, and more suffered. Finally the US came in and broke the stalemate and ended it. Yes, the US lost, too. Among all the suffering, Germany was near the top of the list and, much of Germany had a hugely bitter reaction. (3) Versailles. There were 'reparations'. So, Germany printed money to pay off the reparations more quickly. Then the inflation ruined the finances for much of Germany and created more bitterness. (4) Democracy. The German efforts at democracy in the 1920s were clumsy -- more bitterness. (5) The Great Depression. Sure, the stock market crash was in the US. So, people had borrowed from the banks to buy stocks and suddenly had no hope of paying back. So, the banks went bust. So, the economy slowed enormously. The 2008 housing crisis was similar; we did it to ourselves and didn't often enough see the disaster coming and haven't been very smart about fixing the problem, and the same song, first verse was in the 12 years after the 1929 crash. Then somehow the more developed economies were much more closely linked than one would expect. So, the US slowed down buying from Germany, and some Germans lost their jobs; they didn't buy, and more Germans lost their jobs; they didn't buy from the US, and more in the US lost their jobs; etc. (6) Hitler. He was mad, and in particular he was mad about all the disasters that happened to Germany. And did I mention, he was mad? Determined. Ambitious. Ruthless. Can think of various 'reasons' from his relationship with his mother, with girls, his struggles in his career, his WWI experience, etc., but none of these factors has any 'predictive' power since many others with similar backgrounds didn't go nuts. (7) Fertile Ground. Hitler found fertile ground for organizing and leading, especially leading out of work, angry, ex-WWI German soldiers. Hitler wanted to be able to speak and get his followers up on their hind legs, practiced a lot, and got good at it. (8) German Army Politics. The German Army had some funds for political activities, liked what they saw in Hitler, and provided just enough 'seed' money to keep Hitler going in politics. (9) Communists. In politics it usually can be helpful to have a visible enemy, and Hitler had the Communists. And they were also likely a genuine threat. (10) Elections. By 1933 or so, Hitler had enough political followers to start to make some waves in elections. He didn't do really well, but he did stay in the game. (11) Industry. As might be expected, German industry had some political power. Well, they thought that Hitler could help them, and Hitler no doubt was good at playing along. So, eventually Hindenburg asked Hitler to form a government. (12) Double Down. Then Hitler and his Nazis were the government, but they still didn't have much power. Hitler called for new elections and used the power he did have to 'stuff the ballot boxes' and do better in the second election. So, he had more in the Reichstag, i.e., congress. Then there was some rough and tumble politics, i.e., before a vote in the Reichstag some of Hitler's tugs could 'arrange' that the majority they wanted was present and voting and the rest were still outside. (13) Hindenburg Died. Then Hitler got Hindenburg's job, also, which made Hitler close to a dictator. E.g., his buddy Goering was head of the police force in Prussia. Generally his buddies were running things. (14) Then, in the words in one of the Star Wars movies, Hitler pushed through some 'special powers' for, as I recall, 4 years, to get the economy going again. Amazingly, he actually did it. So it was roads, bridges, ships, planes, whatever. The US should have done as well over the last 4 years. Of course, it's easier to put people to work when also have thugs trash the unions and just dictate what people will get paid -- we don't do such drastic things in the US. Hitler ran what can be called a 'command economy'. Why most economies run from the center flop and his didn't, I don't know. But German industry had reason to be happy with Hitler. (15) Progress. By 1936 and the Berlin Olympics, Hitler had Germany looking good, if didn't look too closely. There was a lot of 'authoritarianism', but Germany was 'susceptible' to that. (16) Dictator. Then Hitler got his second term of special powers, was an absolute dictator, and the real monster started to come out. "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.". Plenty of people in Germany with good sense saw the threat, but opposing Hitler was not possible. (17) Dreams. Hitler had 'dreams'. One of his dreams was to take over the land to the east, essentially from Germany to the Arctic, the Urals, and the Black Sea. He wanted to turn this land into 'farms' owned by Germans and with Slavs as slave labor on deliberate starvation diets. Everyone else in that land he wanted just to kill off right away. So Hitler started making war. E.g., he took half of Poland and half of France. For war production, he would turn captured people into slaves. (18) England. Hitler thought that he could quickly take England. But before a landing, he had to defeat the Royal Air Force -- thus started the Battle of Britain. But Hitler's air force was really just not up to the job: Both his fighter planes and his bombers had range too short. Hitler got angry and tried to bomb London, but his fighters could not provide protection as far as London, and, net, in The Battle of Britain Hitler's air force took unacceptable losses, and Hitler gave up. (19) Russia. Hitler came close actually to capturing and holding the lands to the east he had in mind. But, he got delayed: (A) Stalin was also running a 'command economy'. So, as Hitler moved east, Stalin packed up nearly everything of value and moved it much farther east. (B) As Hitler moved east, his front grew to be too wide and his supply lines, too long. (C) Hitler planned badly for the Russian winter. (D) The Russians regrouped and pushed back against Hitler and gained time. (E) Due to events elsewhere, Hitler ran out of time, got over extended and, basically, was not able actually to win in Russia. His losses were huge. Hitler's buddies in Japan declared war on the US, so so did Hitler, and now he was in a two front war, with the US, and on a long walk on a short pier. Hitler was going to take North Africa, move east and take the Suez Canal and, thus, cut off oil, etc. to England, and continue to move east and take the Mideast oil for Germany, but he blew it. First, the US provided massive supplies to Monty a little west of Suez. Rommel got pushed back to the west. England broke the German code, and, thus, much of Rommel's supplies went to the bottom of the Med. Ike invaded North Africa, and Rommel went back to Germany. Hitler's efforts in North Africa were a bust. So, Hitler had lost in England, North Africa, and Russia. England. The US turned England into an unsinkable aircraft carrier, and the US Eighth Air Force along with the Royal Air Force started bombing anything and everything in Germany. Meanwhile the Russians were moving west. By D-Day, June 6, 1944, Hitler was unable to put much of anything into the air. The Normandy invasion was a great success, in spite of some cases of hard times, and then it was a fast charge all the way across France and into Germany. Germany was getting it from the air, from Russia from the east, and from the US, England, etc. from the west. For the German submarines in the Atlantic, too soon for Germany the US and England looked at the maps, blimps, airplanes, radar, sonar, small aircraft carriers, etc. and from bases in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, England, etc. had fairly safe passage across the North Atlantic. Hitler also had bought heavily into the whole 'eugenics' stuff, Darwin, the image of human breeding much like dog breeding, etc. and for that reason, his general resentment and madness, and some long 'tensions' in Europe, long a very bloody place, wanted to kill off everyone he regarded as undesirable. He did a lot, especially in Poland. It appears that since WWII the main lessons were not lost on Germany: No more dictators, Nazis, hate speech, mass unemployment, big inflation, or militarism. A big social safety net. Work hard and smart and just do not mess up again. Could it happen in the US? I'm too afraid it could. We have to be careful.