I don't know if I agree with all that and I'm actually surprised that the author was actually born over a hundred years ago (I would expect that kind of reasoning from someone born about 50 years ago).

Especially in the past people didn't escape from freedom for those reasons, people were desperate and they saw powerful dictators with big promises as their last chance to finally have a better life and the people who already had a good life they just let it happen because they thought that things would not get that bad. A hundred years ago, 90 years ago people were still not bought on democracy and "freedom" whatever that means...