I was watching a documentary about the 1978 mass murder-suicide of the inhabitants of Jonestown ordered by their spiritual leader Jim Jones (which looked like a bad Elvis impersonator) on the Discovery Channel, and it's more intriging than all of the films that I've watched recently.
If great leadership is where your men would believe and follow in whatever you do, then where's the fine line between awe-inspiring and just plain brainwashing? In the case of the Jonestown tragedy, can we blame Jim Jones or do we question the mental weakness (and the lack of judgement) of the followers? For the former you could argue that he had simply
gone mad stepped out of the rational context of normal human beings, believing and justifying his actions within his own 'rational zone' (a la Michael Jackson). For the latter maybe they just had no choice but to carry on believing in him when things started to go awry because they had placed all of their hopes in him - to deny their leader would akin to taking away their hopes as well.
Braindrain.