Which might entirely happen if the Red Amry and the Wehrmacht are the same level of preparatedness. A possible, and likely, outcome of the scenario.
The problem is that then the scenario favours the Soviet Union. In Barbarossa, Germany threw pretty much everything it had at them; if that force was defeated, they would be in a very poor position when the Soviets retaliated. Any scenario where Hitler doesn't achieve a quick knock-out spells doom for the Germans (Soviet superiority in numbers was never less than 3:1 on the Eastern Front, and if one looks at the figures for tanks or artillery it's even worse), and the worse the initial attack fares, the shorter is the space they'll have to retreat, the time they will have to switch to full war production, and the greater are Stalin's own resources. Bear in mind that the USSR outproducing the Nazi Empire by such a margin had had it most productive areas (Ukraine, Western European Russia) occupied/destroyed by the Germans; the full economic might of those industrial centres should be more potent still.
The by far wisest thing for Germany would have been to ignore Roosevelt's provocations, no matter how severe. The amount of direct damage and help Germany's warring enemies that Roosevelt was able to deliver without a DoW was sharpely limited, no matter how much Roosevelt stretched Executive Privilege. The Congress would have never delivered such a DoW, either before or after Pearl Harbor, so Hitler's own DoW played into Roosevelt's hands.
Not really any argument there; at best, he gained a small temporary advantage by incurring HUUUGE long-term problems. Still, what I meant was, he at least had a reason. With the Soviets defeated, Germany could've just sat around and let the British ruin themselves with war debts.
Quite possible, which would fulfill the "they keep fighting till mutual exaustion" scenario. I'm just convinced that the military equation in a pure Russo-German fight is that mutual exaustion will not pave the way to total victory of either part.
But the military-industrial balance strongly favour Russia. Their industry is larger and they have ample access to supplies; even if Germany remains on friendly terms with the West, there's a limit to how much oil/chromite/whatever that they can buy with their dwindling resources.
OTOH, if Hitler is politically savy enough to ensure Polish satellization, he might just wise enough to pursue a Brest Litovsk negotiated settlement instead of the total conquest scenario.
Hitler, at least in his later stages, was a psycho-fanatic; that wouldn't change overnight. The best one could hope for would be if Doctor Morell was butterflied away, somehow. Still, his madness wasn't all drug-induced. (And then there are the theories that he had syphilis etc, but I've never seen any convincing evidence for those.)
The British and French public picking a fight with Germany while it makes them a favor by exausting themselves against Soviet Russia, and a double bigger favor by bleeding Soviet Russia white ? Remember, in this scenario Germany has done nothing to threaten Western democracies directly, all her expansionism was towards Central and Eastern Europe. Nothing of that is vital to the security of France or Britain. Until the invasion of Czechia, most of what Hitler did was acceptable to many Britons, he was "redressing the wrongs of Versailles". This kind of PoD might well require Germany giving up annexation of Czechia in favor of satellization like Poland. In such a scenario, few will be willing to pick a fight for the sake of an anti-fascist crusade.
That's changing the POD. But it still doesn't remove the problem completely. Regardless of how friendly they were (and the French, at least, never had any high opinion of Hitler's Germany), it just wouldn't be sane to leave your country entirely undefended against a Western great power. They would need a strategic reserve in the West, unless they were genuinely allied with France, at that seems to be more of a change than the POD allows for.
Again, the stalemate, which I agree is a distinct possibility. Whether that or Brest-Litovsk is more probable depends on how good Soviet and German generalship gets. I only rail against the "once the first shot is fired, the Red Army is fated to reach Strasburg" Sovietwank. Without the help of the Western Allies, hordes of Ivan conscripts and the Ural industries were not that good to enforce that result.
But everything depends on the initial German push being successful. No one, not even Hitler himself, believed that a war of attrition against the USSR could succeed, and this was IOTL when he controlled Europe. The factories were powerful indeed; have you read the Soviet military mobilisation plans? They called for the production of tens of thousands of aircraft in bare peacetime. (I'll be back with a quote later, if you like.) The Soviets were paranoid enough to consistently overestimate the threats posed against them, so they armed accordingly.
And the Soviets, too, can still trade with the West for radios and other important articles they can't manufacture enough of by themselves.
Oh, the bill of massive rearmement coming to reckoning without Western Europe to plunder, plus keeping millions conscripted to occupy European Russia while you pursue genocidal schemes and any able-bodied Slav goes partisan.
They can plunder European Russia instead, if they do win; it's a rich country, in raw resources at least. Will the military elites object to mass conscription? The military-industrial complex? Party factions? Perhaps they might, but only if and when popular pressure grows high enough, and that will take a while.
The most savage and wide insurgency in history ? How many troops Germany would need to contain that ? And what would that do to German economy, manpower, and morale ? And how long before the generals decide insane racial cleansing schemes are not worth the bones of good German soldiers and give Hitler a bullet ? It would be the Portuguese Revolution scenario in Berlin
.
Send out patrols to steal food from ignorant peasants? Take over the railroad so food can't be shipped to famine-afflicted areas? This is easy; the Bolsheviks did it already, they just stopped when it went too far. Unlike them, the SS won't.
Well, assuming that Walkurie was kinda sloppy since the German Resistance knew the Allies were implacable about grinding Germany into the dust, and it only served to cut the bloodshed, and it came very close to success nonetheless, I assume anti-Nazi conspirators could have been much more wholehearted and hence well-prepared and well-organized when theri success would ensure a sane leadership and the long-term success of the Fatherland.
It would be a few years at the very least after the Great Victory in the East before that happened; victory is always a good thing in public and military opinion. And how close did it come? It didn't have popular support, nor the support of the SS nor even more than a fraction of the non-Party civil/military leadership. Killing Hitler is one thing, orderly taking over the country another.