A corresponding process occurred in the psychology of politics. People no longer looked to liberal democracy, which they held responsible for the Depression, for protection and guidance. Instead, they placed their trust in a new type of authoritarian state, personified institutionally by II Duce and the Führer in Italy and Germany, and symbolically by President Roosevelt in the United States. The cornerstone of the leader’s legitimacy was the idea that he embodied the nation as a whole, and under his leadership, the course the nation was to pursue led not outward but inward.
