The significance of Hitler is that his rise to power is a case study of how a democracy openly chose to appoint a dictator.  As Martin Luther King correctly noted, almost everything Hitler did was legal....

Today, we see a world that is in a deeper state of crisis than the world of Weimar Germany that produced Hitler and the Third Reich...

The very biological foundations of life are in danger, and things are getting worse every year.  Meanwhile, "democratic" political systems are even more paralyzed in dealing with this threat than Weimar Germany was in dealing with the Great Depression.

In terms of economics, particularly in America, real wages are back to where they were 60 years ago while social peace in maintained by levels of debt that continue to set all time records as a share of the economy.

Thus, a great danger of a new totalitarianism remains and is growing. This is why the study of totalitarianism is relevant. 

Take the time to educate yourself and keep an eye on the world around you.
Things are going to get much worse.

In many ways, today's America resembles France before the French Revolution.  Meanwhile, since 2001 there has been a relentless and growing campaign in the "democratic" societies to reduce civil liberties in order to supposedly "fight terrorism".