But maybe familiarity breeds a sense of proforma.

You covered a vast territory encompassing all of Weimar society. That's a bit unwieldy; let's focus on politics, which is like the two-dimensional projection of a 3D reality. Or the ripples on the surface of the ocean showing the turmoil beneath.

Besides, the Nazis spent most of 1933 after they first took power killing off all that beautiful bourgeois society. The nightclubs, the theater, the universities, the symphony, even the sports clubs, all were purged, of Jews and other "non-Aryan" influences. Bauhaus was purged. Leave it to the Nazis to transform architectural brutal simplicity into simple brutality.

I recently read The Coming of the Third Reich (link goes to Amazon), which, despite the title, takes a broader view of Weimar Germany, and correctly, I think, places Hitler during most of that 14 years as one striver among many, one orator who rose to the top with the most compelling voice.

As you note, Hitler didn't introduce anti-semitism to Germany. It had been thriving, and though there's no doubt he was a passionate anti-semite himself, he certainly made it a central weapon in his arsenal. As any good authoritarian would.

There's the conventional story of post-Versailles bitterness, fueled by the consoling story that The Jews had "stabbed Germany in the back" to cause it to lose the war; and then along came the Great Depression.

But just as important was that the democratic republic, Weimar, established by a short revolution after the Armistice--before Versailles--was widely viewed as illegitimate. Large numbers of Germans hated democracy, and wanted a return to the security of Bismarck's authoritarian Second Reich.

Right from the start, then, Weimar had a large right wing political movement, made up of many parties, determined to further delegitimize and ultimately tear down the democratic republic and restore the Reich. A Third Reich. The Nazis were only one among many such right wing parties, and took most of that 14 years to come to dominate the German Right.

The German Right was, for a long time, balanced by a thriving Left, from Communists at the fringes through Democratic Socialists to centrists. The Right considered them all enemies, and set out to destroy them.

What I see in this history is that democracy will ultimately fall before a determined long-term effort to tear it down from the inside. The Weimar Republic started with a hopelessly shaky foundation and a large population of anti-democrats, and it took only 14 years start to finish to destroy it.

But if the Right is patient, and willing to pursue a multigenerational mission, fueled by dynastic fortunes perpetually threatened by democratic government, it can bring down even a once-solid, long-established democratic republic.

If the Right spends decades preaching that democratic government is the enemy...that democratic government takes from virtuous us and gives to unworthy them...that government should be starved until it's small enough to strangle in a bathtub...you can destroy even the United States.

The Right spent decades and billions of dollars softening up the electorate to bring us to this point.

And now they're outraged that Trump has stolen the fruits of that labor, just as they were about to seal the deal forever.

It is to laugh.