I recently stumbled upon the fact that, on July 15th, 1944, Irwin Rommel sent Hitler an ultimatum. He basically told Hitler that if he did not come up with a "political solution" to the losing situation in which Germany found herself, that he, Rommel, would take matters in his own hands
Rommel polled all his subordinate commanders, asking what they would do if he gave them orders that were contradictory to the wishes of Hitler. In all cases, including the SS Corps commanders, they said they would follow Rommel's orders.
What Rommel said to several of his subordinates is that he intended to surrender the 7th Army to the western Allies. If this was for some reason not practicable, he intended to have his units stand aside and let the Allied units go charging ahead. He told at least two of his commanders that having the western Allies take Berlin and Germany was much preferable to having the Soviets do it.
This whole adventure came to naught two days later when a couple of RAF Spitfires shot up Rommel's staff car and put him in the hospital.
It is interesting to speculate on what might have happened had this come to pass.
- The Anglo-Americans would have a breakout right across the front almost a month earlier than they did;
- They would not have had to spend time squeezing and eliminating the Falaise pocket;
- Their supply situation would not have been so tenuous, although it would have happened just about the time of the Channel gales;
- There were fewer Allied units on the ground to take advantage of the situation;
- There would be no remnants of the 7th Army as cadres to rebuild units on, as happened after Falaise.
Under this eventuality, and coupled with the assassination attempt on Hitler and the resulting chaos, there is a slim chance that the war would be over by Christmas, as some so optimistically believed.