I had an idea for a potential scenario that would involve Stalin dying earlier (some time early after Barbarossa, 1942 or 43). With the war still going on, no immediate figure takes power, with executive power held in an emergency coalition of figures such as Khrushchev, Molotov, Beria, etc. focused on conducting the war effort. After the war, this alliance would quickly break down, with someone particularly odious like Beria taking or beginning to take power. The remaining members of the former coalition ‘invite’ General Zhukov to assist them, but instead Zhukov has the Red Army purge them all, resulting in him informally leading the USSR until perhaps the 1960s. Is this a plausible sequence of events? The goal of this scenario was that without Stalin’s designs on Eastern Europe, and Zhukov’s willingness to cooperate with Eisenhower, the Cold War could be delayed or entirely avoided, resulting in a united Germany, detente, and Eastern Europe included in the Marshall Plan.