Anaxagoras
Banned
With a POD no earlier than January 1, 1943, how can Germany survive as an unoccupied Nazi-ruled country at the conclusion of World War II?
Militarily, Germany probably has the means to achieve a stalemate, if they use their resources wisely.
One can imagine a situation that the Stalingrad disaster leads to a nervous breakdown of Hitler, a coup by the army or even that the army violently blames Hitler for the disaster as he had been increasingly taking a direct role in directing the armies (even serving as Army Group commander by remote control for a time).
Let’s assume the army takes over the direction of the war with Hitler either gone or vastly reduced in power (certainly over policy). Matching means to goals, the Ostheer assumes an active defence posture in the east. This might well have allowed Germany’s weaker army to hold off the Russian steamroller (the same strategy NATO would have used).
Meanwhile the Westheer consolidates and prepares to receive the invasion.
None of these measures would allow Germany to win the war but it could make it equally impossible or simply too costly to win for the allies.
The only thing remaining is the atomic bomb. Either it is butterflied away or the Germans are capable of mutual assured destruction with a significantly upgraded V2 program fitted with chemical warheads. A simple “you nuke us and we gas the population of England” exchange would be enough to neutralize this avenue. In fact, a sufficiently believable V2 program might even have neutralized the mutual destruction of cities, as happened in 1939 when both sides were loath to bomb cities for fear of retaliation.
What if Germany, without Hitler in power, withdrew to its pre-War borders in the West at sometime before D-Day, withdrew its aid from Italy and shortened its lines in the Soviet Union, perhaps establishing lines that include the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine. Norway would be evacuated also. New fortified lines are drawn up and the first peace feelers are sent towards the Allies with the hope that an armistice can be agreed to with Germany dominating central Europe.
The biggest obstacle to Nazis maintaining power in a post-WW2 defeat world is not the Americans or the Russians or the British... it's the German people themselves. I doubt they'd want to hang on to people, or a political movement that's lead them to so much suffering and devastation, and this is only going to be compounded further when the truth about what the political leadership has been doing to 'undesirables' over the past 10+ years is revealed to the German people..
The only thing remaining is the atomic bomb. Either it is butterflied away or the Germans are capable of mutual assured destruction with a significantly upgraded V2 program fitted with chemical warheads. A simple “you nuke us and we gas the population of England” exchange would be enough to neutralize this avenue. In fact, a sufficiently believable V2 program might even have neutralized the mutual destruction of cities, as happened in 1939 when both sides were loath to bomb cities for fear of retaliation.
No it wouldn't. People had trained for gas bombardment all through the war, and knew how to defend against it. And gas, even nerve gas, was not a superweapon even back then, with issues of dissipation, limited spread and bad targeting. It would cause casualties, certainly, but not MAD, especially with the limited German delivery capabilities. More likely, the result would be gas with the Allied bombs over Berlin, Dresden etc.