A new history of Weimar Germany pushes back on the popular claim that the West is one economic crash away from its own slide into dictatorship — a partial reassurance, with a warning attached.

• Historian Victor Sebestyen argues Weimar was killed by bad leaders, not doomed by fate — small choices and luck decided everything.
• Today's parallels are real but shallow: America has not lost a world war, lived through hyperinflation, or had a revolutionary neighbor funding armed uprisings next door.
• Hindenburg gets the blame — a president who despised democracy, won a close election thanks to a communist spoiler candidate, and handed Hitler power.
• Germany's moderates spent a decade fearing the communists while the far right grew, and the left never united against the Nazis until it was too late.
• The culture war of the 1920s mattered as much as the economy — sudden freedom after censorship ended triggered a huge conservative backlash the far right rode to power.

Outlook: The lasting worry is less an economic crash than fragmentation and weak leadership, with AI named as the next shock big enough to destabilize Western societies.