YYA> What does this have to do with �sociological processes�?!
your example is fair as is your frustration. I am saying that similar matzav existed in other countries. Fathers with shtreimlach had children who were going to anarchist/communist/bundist meetings and got excited about those ideas [see 80% of young women in NYC voting for Mamdani after all lessons about socialism from 20th century, but I digress]. This was everywhere. Slabodka at some point sent new contingent of yeshiva bochrim from Kovno to Telshe because the previous crop of students decamped into socialism. There is a reason, R Kotler’s teachers in Minsk intercepted letters from his sister – because they were legitimately afraid that he might follow her advice to study math. R Solovechik describes meeting a mathematician Yaakov Gromer in Berlin who was Einstein’s secretary – and former talmid of Chaim Brisker, non-observant but learning gemora and describing that Einstein is a moral person but R Chaim’s chesed was at a different level …
So, those students who you describe were nto simply hostages of a group of liars, they were victims of the information dominant at the time. They also heard news, read papers, and discussed ideas with their friends. And Jewish leaders at the time did not have a good answer.