Figure this one:
Hitler stops at France...just stops. Negotiates with GB. Reloads, rearms and refits in say, 5 years. Keeps the French happy and starts his rhetoric in France...recruits about 500K French and fortifies the French coast even more during those 5 years. Finishes the jet age aircraft and, God forbid, the nuke. Now, its 1946.
THEN, he goes into Russia...and straight up invades GB.
Thank God the man wasn't patient.
Ahh but Germany did not have the time to wait until all of this was ready before invading Russia. Stalin had every intention of using poland as a jumping point into Europe once his military was stable enough. every action he took preceding the war with germany bears this out. the steady methodical build up of their western front, the invasion of Nordic regions etc etc...all of these actions could only serve one purpose, to surround Germany's eastern flank and give Russia multiple locations for launching an invasion of Europe.
aside from that, it would have taken far more than 5 years to quell the french dissidents..Hitlers only move after he invaded poland was to invade France the jump directly to the utter and total destruction of GB. his mistake was employing only a half hearted and non committed action to accomplishing this endeavour. without GB as a platform to launch from it would have taken USA at least 6 years to enter the war in full effective force. this 6 years could have then been used to destroy the western half of Russia, use that enormous mountain range as a natural wall against counter attack from the Russians living on the other side....the side that Japan was to invade and provoke as much as possible as per the pact between Germany and Japan.
there is probably a million possible scenario's that would have all ended the war better for Germany. but they were not to be..
I, being half German, despise that Germany lost the war, especially as badly as they did, not truly to its enemies, but to the utter incompetence of its leaders....
BUT! without pause or hesitation let me be first to say that the machine that was called "The NAZI Party" needed to die a death that would ensure that it would never rise its monstrous head again. its death needed to be so overwhelming so devastating to those that practiced it that it would serve as a lesson to the entire world that it is a fruitless and barren tree who's seeds should never again be sewn in any society.
so it is what it is....i am hateful of the facts, but i acknowledge that it is how it should be....