Hello, fellow AH buffs... err, enthusiastic scholars. I'm delighted to have discovered this forum and to come in such distinguished company. Please allow me to claim somewhat of a novice's privilege by asking to start discussin on two of my most preferred AH scenarioes ever. One is pre-1900, the other is post-1900, but they are akin in that they are somewhat of a right-wing philo-USA, philo-German, anti-Soviet wank.
The one relevant here, AKA "My Ideal WWII ending", might be described as "Western Allies win WWII, Germany keeps its pre-war gains, USSR pushes back invaders but is contained or suffers a Brest-Litovsk". WWII ends leaving a deNazified independent democratic super-RFG Germany allied to the Western Powers. It remains united and in possession of all its ethnic territories, minus Alsace-Lorraine, Pozen, Corridor, and Luxembourg ('37 borders, Austria, Sudetenland, Danzig, Memel). Eastern Europe is in the Western sphere of influence, and in due time, enters NATO and the EU when they take shape. Nazi regime falls at the end of WWII in a way that Germany is able to achieve a compromise peace, suffering only denazification, but not division or territorial loss. USSR is able to push back invaders from the soil of Russia proper, but it is unable to push any further than its '39 borders, or alternatively, the boundaries of the Russian state, leaving Eastern Europe, and possibly Baltic States, Belarus, and Ukraine, independent and democratic.
USA beats Japan as in OTL. Americans occupy all of Korea, but with Soviet assistance, Mao may (or may not) conquer China for communism, and further its spread in Indochina.
In a way, it's very akin to the current geopolitical situation of OTL Europe, only Germany keeps its post-Munich borders, plus Danzig and Memel.
What might be a plausible AH course of WWII that causes such an ending, and what are the likely further geopolitical and cultural developments of such a world till the 21st Century ??