>>>>Since you're lacking in historical perspective, here's some help. A map of Europe in 1944 at the invasion of Normandy:
>>>>http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/citizensoldier/conflicts/WWIIeto/images/europomap.gif
>>>>
>>>>Germany owned all of Europe, and would have continued to do so if the US had not entered the war. I didn't say no one else contributed, but the US was the deciding factor.
>>>>
>>>to the embolded part:
>>>the US entering was the deciding factor to divide germany via the iron curtain into 85 %west and 15% east -
>>>largely measured by ground occupied at cease fire time and #/power of troops in germany -
>>>and then exchange a lot of ground for Berlin.
>>>
>>>Now just as a SWAG: without the US entering odds were IMO:
>>>01-03% of germany keeping as much ground as your map showed (needs major advance somewhere)
>>>25-33% of germany getting a cease fire with the red army somewhere along the lines first agreed upon with Stalin
>>>40-50% of most of germany becoming a vassal of UDSSR and countries west of it staying half-neutral at first
>>>15-25% of countries west of germany becoming a vassal of the UdSSR same as all of germany as well.
>>>
>>>Charles ? Jos ? your take on such a scenario ?
>>
>>I'm not much for odds or percentages. US (unbombed) manufacturing capability was certainly a big factor for both Britain and the USSR. American Air power became a big factor from 43 on. Manpower was a factor for D Day and actually logistics was as big a contribution as anything.
>>
>>Technology played a big part and that was a lot of Brit -Bletchley Park, Britain's superior intelligence organization that taught OSS, radar.
>>
>>Without what Britain accomplished (with material US aid but with Brit and Empire pilots and some Polish and US vols) in making Sea Lion unattractive was a very very big deal, since it led to Barbarossa and Hitler turning toward Russia and kept Churchill's big aircraft carrier in place for opening a wester front in 44.
>>
>>Ground troops and armor it was USSR all the way. Best tanks in the war, most grounds troops ever assembled. A willingness to take casualties only possible with the guiding hand of Stalin and NKVD squads to shoot deserters.
>>
>>Once Hitler committed to 2 fronts he lost the war.
>>
>>Even if Germany had not had to fight on 2 fronts, as long as USSR could have kept supplied through Murmansk and kept the oil fields Germany could hope for an eastern front stalemate at best but no long term stability. If one of the airstrikes had taken out Churchill and Halifax and his crowd prevailed a separate piece would have been possible. For that matter if Edward VIII had not abdicated 1939 may have played out very differently. France could have been managed. At some point resistance there and in Holland, Benlux etc would have be manageable.
>>
>>There was always the Joe Kennedy - Lindberg crowed in the US that could have lived with a German Europe - especially if it was in a death struggle with Stalin.
>>
>>Hitler being truly crazy was the best allie the allies had. Most other factors were very much in play.
>>
>>History is tricky. Few things are inevitable. Something as big as WWI - WWII - Cold War ( the same war in 3 acts with weird intermission after act one) has a lot of what ifs.
>>
>>There is some great Alternate History fiction on this subject.
>>
>>The Man in the HIgh Castle (Phillip K Dick)
>>SS/GB (Len Deighton)
>>Farthing (Jo Walton)
>>Ha'penny (Jo Walton)
>>Fatherland (Robert Harris)
>>
>>are my favorites.
>
>A more pragmatic German foreign policy with a little less master race stuff could have caused a different result. Conquering heroes through the western soviet republics driving out the bolsheviks. Instead they thought it was all about guns. Where have I heard that before LOL.

German fascism could have been quite successful and for a time it was. The miltary expansionism was both unnecessary and counter productive. The Fuerer prinzip gave a certain vision at the beginning but there were certainly a lot of people in Germany - especially among the industrialists and the junker class in the military - who could have allied with sympathetic elements in England and France very successfully against Stalin and suppressed the Communists domestically by co-opting the trade unions. But the window of opportunity was short and by 1935 or 36 it became a lot less likely.

The anti-semitism, of course, was not just the most evil but also the most self-destructive element of Nazism. German Jews were the most assimilated in Europe, France was more anti-Semitic in 1930, and the German Jews certainly represented one of most educated, patriotic, prosperious blocks of citizens in Germany. Hitler losing the contribution that could have been made to German success by the Jews was only matched in mad folly by Stalin's murdering 80 percent of the Soviet army's officer class right before the war. ( wouldn't see something that crazy again until Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution)

People forget (or more accurately are generally ignorant of the fact) that in the first 30 years of the century fascism was quite popular on both sides of the Atlantic and while it was always a nationalist ideology it was seen as pragmatic and technocratic. Woodrow Wilson's Progressives (and to a certain degree TR's) were America's first - and most extreme - flirtation with fascism. And while Progressivism gave us much needed reform and advanced a good number of worthy causes it also was very nativist, gave us prohibition, the Palmer raids, war-time infringement of constitutional rights that were extreme and beyond any necessity and apologia for eugenics and expansion of the powers of the state that were very much in keeping with fascist dogma.

The New Deal was its decendant. Ideologues and idealists wobbled back and forth between Communism and Fascism and in each country that struggle took on a different character. The similarities were often greater than the differences - with the main one being the Red internationalism and the Black nationalism. The visions of role of the individual vs The Group were disturbingly alike.

Since most Americans only are interested in history to the degree it can provide slogans or score partisan debating points, the period before the New Deal is pretty misunderstand both in terms of foreign and domestic politics. "Progressives" probably have no idea of the lineage of the Progressive movement and think of Wilson as a kindly old college professor who was thwarted in his dream of the League of Nations by Lodge and bunch of willful reactionaries.

And of course the reality is far more complex, as are the politics of England, Germany, France and Italy (and poor Spain) in this period.