Not the whole answer, but alcohol and other drugs played a large part in the nazi regime (1).
My guess is that authoritarianism, just like drug use, is a response to depression. When you don't (want to) realise the hurt is coming from within, instead you think the world is out to hurt you, then you want more and more control.
if it had been provided better equipment by the west
I think that's the major lesson for EU: industry and logistics is the backbone of defense. All the social and ecological progress came at the cost of deindustrialization and increased dependence upon russian gas. Concluding in the inability to defend that social progress.
In a way, we've demonstrated that chosing social progress and ecology comes at a large human cost.
For lemmy it's usually the mythical "one percent"