The rise and fall of such devils like Hitler and Mao is always dependable on the information their supporters have. Hitler even managed to get elected by hordes of uneducated Germans. It was not the average nazi-voter of 1933 that was evil, it was the nazi-voter that has read "Mein Kampf" or understood the crazy ideology of this idiot from Austria. At first sight Hitlers "values" were "great": Support the millitary, make the economy going, project leadership (he called himself "leader"-Fuehrer) and give the nation pride again after a lost war. The bloody outcome was not predictable for most of his voters in 1933.
It is the same with those contemporary maoists (or islamists - or marxists or whatever) all around the world. Most of them are not "evil" like their leader was. They simply are blinded by false information and false values.
I agree that people were lured. But in addition, it seems to me both Hitler and Mao had a kind of charismatic, hynopic power to induce an entire people to commit madness. I once read reports that when the insanity of Hitler's policies were obvious to every German by the end of WWII, a majority of people just kept on because "the Fufher had said so". In fact, people hated the policies but they still loved the Fuhrer. When Hitler died the whole German population seemed to "awake" instantly and the return to sanity seemed to come instantaneously to a majority of people.
It is very similar to China from 1949 to 1976. People were hyponotized by Mao and treated him almost as a god. He didn't need any secret police to force the people to obey him - a vast majority automatically did the deeds for him on their own initiatives. When it was apparent everything was wrong by 1975, not many people dared to voice any dissent. Everyone hated Maoism, but loved Mao, and as a result they kept on the insanity. When Mao died in 1976, support for the Maoist line crumbled quickly among the people and Communist Party at large, and of course Mao's widow and a few others were toppled in a coup, arrested, and tried.
The terrifying part is that people, even many with common sense and intelligence, will rally to leaders like such, and then support all sorts of insane and evil acts on a massive basis - what we call "mass-scale insanity" in Chinese.