Broch aims to explore the psychological, mass psychological, and political causes and mechanisms that led to fascist systems in Europe. The poetic model is a mountain village into which a stranger named Marius Ratti arrives. Ratti is able to credibly promise the fulfillment of secret hopes and desires to every social class and various generations. By exploiting conflicting interests, militarizing the youth, persecuting minorities, promising a future material superiority of the village over neighboring villages, and knowing how to provoke mass hysteria, Ratti seizes power.