Although the simplistic contemporary bumper-sticker synopsis has it that fascism glorified the state at the expense of the individual, this was certainly not the way the proposition was presented to the populace.

What fascism promised was actually to restore the dignity of the individual, by offering him an opportunity to make a noble, even heroic, voluntary sacrifice of his own personal wants and needs for the good of the greater community.

When the fascists spoke of failed individualism, it was in the context of various forms of empty 1920s self-indulgence that had already left a generation feeling distinctly less substantial than its predecessors.  A sense of diminishment was prevalent even before the flimsy, self-servingly hollow financial schemes behind much of the world's publicly accumulated wealth came crashing down.  By the time the 1930s arrived, unfettered materialistic hedonism looked even less like something that self-respecting people should be reaching for.  (And of course, even if people still aspired to it, it was completely out of almost everyone’s reach.)

All in all, noble selflessness made a lot more practical sense to most men as a route to personal significance than scrambling to attain speculative stock fortunes, flashy cars, or the “kept” companionship of flappers.

At the same time, fascism (particularly the Nazi kind), held out certain prospects for degrading other people--a classic dysfunctional way for abusers to attempt to distance themselves from their own feelings of insignificance--thus enabling its adherents to simultaneously choose both a low road and a high road.

And of course, given their militaristic orientation, all forms of fascism offered virtually unlimited supplies of classic tribal opportunities to feel significance and connection by advancing the tribe’s cause in combat.