how could they have not known what the future would be.
Simple, people are idiots. Do you think Hitler got that far because people are wise?
Yeah, I was very impressed with the opening episodes of WINDS OF WAR because of the depiction of the clueless, if not innocent, Thirties. A lot of people did a lot of scrambling after that. "British philosophy" for example. I forget what it was called, but they had some kind of fascist thing going. I came across that one by accident. Of course, Charles Lindbergh got caught out, but most of them ducked out of the way. Everything changed in an instant.