An interesting question about “culpability” of Jewish leaders at the time. I absolutely recognize great things many rabbonim did at the time creating asnd preserving certain communities. Same goes for more modern cases of Israeli and American charedim. At the same time, so many Jews assimilated at the time – conventional thinking is to blame Reformim, MM, “the times” … but surely we can also contemplate why rabbonim of the time were able to save only small minority.
In theory, all institutions we have now – schools, communities, bays yaakovs, a yeshiva year in EY, moetzes … could have been implemented at the time.
More realistically, R Hirsh’s and R Salanter’s approaches might have worked in 18th century Germany. The approach that was used (and still used by some) is to preserve saving minority by abandoning the rest, as is done on submarines where the safe sections are sealed off from the ones that are already damaged even if there are people still there.
I am in no way “blaming” those rabbonim from my “hindsight” position. But the objective result was far from perfect and we should not discard efforts of those who tried to save the remaining Jews through other means.