You have to look at it yourself, js1138, and come to your own conclusions. Probably the easiest place to observe the "group effect" would be to look at footage of any of Hitler's speeches to mass gatherings. People were whipped up into a frenzy, and there was a kind of emotional infection or induction going on which rendered the total consciousness of the group field more than the sum of its individual parts. I suggest the people's love of and devotion to Hitler was largely cooked up in a group "consciousness incubator" involving great masses of people, all resonating to the passionate rhetoric of Hitler. The fact that Hitler was mainly spewing vile hatred that should have offended the largely Christian German people is the crux of my perplexity. What was it about Hitler and/or this setting that could work people up into such a frenzy, bordering on mass hysteria, that could make them forget about their own supposed moral values? What dynamics could produce such an effect?
You asked: "Are you suggesting that people isolated from the rhetoric and crowd noise would be affected by some non-physical emanation?" No, I'm not suggesting that, js1138. (Though I do imagine that "emanations" have a physical basis.) This is probably a case of "you had to be there." But the point is, people leaving the stadium would have left with an individual consciousness that had been altered by the experience (favorably, in Hitler's case). And the subsequent attitudes and "values" would have become a "normal" part of daily consciousness for those individuals, from that point on. They, in turn, could convey these attitudes and values to the people with whom they came into contact in their daily lives, and this would further propagate the favorable values and attitudes with respect to Hitler to people who may not even have been part of the original mass gathering.
Don't know whether this helps at all. I have tried to be descriptive, because as I've said before, the field dynamics of the group effect are not yet well understood, and I'm not making any hypotheses yet. (I'll wait for the experiments to be done.) Which is why I invite you simply to take a look for yourself, then think about what you've seen. Thanks for writing, js1138.
You might read some of the European biographies of Hitler and some histories (from various viewpoints) of the times. The Nazis appealed very much to the agricultural community (this was the biggest surprise to me.) The Versailles Treaty had drained Germany of much of its capital. There was 25% to 40% unemployment; street battles between Communists and Nazis happened regularly. Historically German Christians were anti-Semitic (see the writings of Martin Luther.) It was easy (and successful) to blame things on "The Jews" and the Stab-in-the-Back Weimar Democrats.
Combine a bunch of anti-Semitism, populist appeal, inflation about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 marks to the pre-war mark, continuing Versailles payments, unemployment, rioting the streets, and a bit of chrisma from an orator such as Hitler, the Nazis get a much better chance.