Certainly, in times of devastation, people look for scapegoats. In certain time periods and places a kind of blood lust takes over, as with the Crusaders during the Middle Ages. Indeed the kind of behavior attributed to witches has the same "flavor" as the stories circulated in Germany about Jews poisoning wells (that's always a big one for witches too), or using and drinking the blood of Christian children in their rites. Jews, who drain all the blood out of animals before eating the meat. Sometimes one's mind is boggled by the stupidity of commonly held ideas.
However, The Thirty Years War took place during the 17th century. What about the 15th, 16th and 18th?
Perhaps it had something to do with the religious conflicts. The Inquisition wasn't the only institution looking for "heretics"; it's just that the "heretics" of Protestant controlled areas were the Catholics. In such an atmosphere things can get out of hand, although I'm still unsure why it was so much worse in the north. Perhaps because in southern Europe the Counter-Reformation wiped out the fires pretty quickly?
What people often forget is that most revolutions don't seek an era of toleration; they just want to establish their own orthodoxy with their own "heretics" of various kinds, which is indeed what happened with the Protestant Reformation.
Perhaps in France, for example, it arose out of the turmoil of the religious conflicts, but some of it was perhaps fed by proclamations like this by Martin Luther:
"[h=1]
MARTIN LUTHER: EXECUTE ADULTERERS, WITCHES, FRIGID WIVES, & PROSTITUTES"[/h]
"http://www.pagadiandiocese.org/2017/10/30/martin-luther-execute-adulterers-witches-frigid-wives-prostitutes/
Now, this site has its own ax to grind, but the quotes are real enough. Maybe I'm wrong, but so far as i know there wasn't this kind of rhetoric from the papacy at this time, so that may have something to do with it.
And I must speak plainly. If I were a judge, I would have such a poisonous, syphilitic whore tortured by being broken on the wheel and having her veins lacerated, for it is not to be denied what damage such a filthy whore does to young blood, so that it is unspeakably damaged before it is even fully grown and destroyed in the blood. (Table-Talk, WA, TR, IV, no. 4857, pp. 552-554; cited in Susan C. Karant-Nunn & Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks [editors and translators], Luther on Women: a Sourcebook, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 157-158)
Concerning the female sorcerer. . . . Why does the law name women more than men here, even though men are also guilty of this? Because women are more susceptible to those superstitions of Satan; take Eve, for example. They are commonly called “wise women.” Let them be killed. (Sermon on Exodus 22:18: “You shall not permit a female sorcerer to live,” 1526, WA XVI, p. 551; in Susan C. Karant-Nunn & Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, ibid, p. 231)
August 25, 1538, the conversation fell upon witches who spoil milk, eggs, and butter in farm yards. Dr. Luther said: “I should have no compassion on these witches; I would burn all of them.
Cultural factors in those centuries may be at play, because as regards Italy, (and France, and also perhaps Spain, although in the latter case I don't know that for certain) while a man or woman could get away with killing a partner caught "in the act", I've never heard of anyone in authority proposing that prostitutes or adulterers be killed. Prostitutes were rather regarded as a "safe outlet" in an era where women had to remain chaste till marriage and adultery carried a high cost.
Sexuality is indeed the undercurrent I see in the witch trials. Poisoning someone's cow wasn't what really incensed them; it was the idea of women dancing naked in the forest, of orgies, of "familiars" sucking at their breasts. Sick, all of it. Maybe a problem of sexual dysfunction because of repression at the time? I don't know.
Of course, today, in the case of economic meltdown, it would be immigrants or people of the opposite party I suppose. People don't change.