Actually, the idea that the western allies advancing deeper into Germany and possibly some surrounding territory and holding it postwar is credible if they maintain initiative better in 1944.
The official lines where not drawn up until some time in 1945.
That was one of the issues about things such as Market Garden. IOTL, it was a disaster, despite some limited successes locally and liberating Belgium.
Had something like that gone according to plan, or if 3rd Army and some other units in that area had the resources and logistical support to keep going somewhat longer, it is quite possible that it could have had an effect on the outcome of who got what where postwar.
Does this mean that the US and British will be marching into Berlin first? Probably not. Does this possibly move the allied zones further east by say 20 miles? Possibly.
Where people keep getting this idea is beyond me.
The official lines were drawn up and already agreed to at the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944. A nice place to see the map from that conference in 1944 is:
http://history.sandiego.edu/cdr2/WW2Pics3/58729.jpg
The zones as agreed in September 1944 by the way were essentially laid out between December 1943 and January 1944 as both the British and the Soviets came up with basically identical proposals in late 1943/early 1944 (note, this is all before the landings in Normandy) which pretty much had the zones as would be later agreed at the Quebec Conference. The only reason why they weren't adopted even earlier is because FDR had a pet project in the form of where the US army would occupy (not so much the zonal boundaries themselves) and had been hoping for the US army to occupy northern Germany so it would have direct access to the States through the northern German ports (and because he didn't want to have the US Army staying more than a couple of years anyway). To the British and the US military planners, the FDR proposal was unworkable since it would have required a different deployment at Normandy (with the Americans on the left flank and the British and Canadians on the right so that the British would end up in southwestern Germany and the Americans in the northwest) or it would have required the British and American armies would have to cross each other's lines of communications to get to their zones. It would have entailed having 6-7 armies crossing each others paths - something like 2 million soldiers having to switch positions.
In any event the basic zonal boundaries were agreed upon by May 1944. At that point FDR wasn't really interested in the zonal boundaries so much as whether the US army would occupy the northwestern zone or the southwestern zone. He had given his agreement to the boundaries as proposed by the Soviets and the British but was still holding out for the US army to end up in the northwest.
See this site for the British-Soviet proposal from December 1943-February 1944:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/other/us-army_germany_1944-46_ch09.htm#b2
So unless Patton has some Ch-47 Chinooks and C-130s ISOTed for his benefit, there is no way that even he can move an army fast enough to really affect the outcome of the zones since they were basically decided upon while he was going hoping to go on the offensive in the Lorraine. Actually Patton would probably need a time machine to affect the outcome of the zones since he would really need to be in Lorraine in 1943 instead of 1944 in order to really change the dynamics.
Actually, the idea that the western allies advancing deeper into Germany and possibly some surrounding territory and holding it postwar is credible if they maintain initiative better in 1944.
The official lines where not drawn up until some time in 1945.
That was one of the issues about things such as Market Garden. IOTL, it was a disaster, despite some limited successes locally and liberating Belgium.
Had something like that gone according to plan, or if 3rd Army and some other units in that area had the resources and logistical support to keep going somewhat longer, it is quite possible that it could have had an effect on the outcome of who got what where postwar....
Actually since Market Garden started the day after the end of the 1944 Quebec Conference which had decided the zones, it would seem pointless that there was any idea of using Market Garden in some kind of race for territory in Germany or that it could have contributed to such. Market Garden was designed to get into Germany faster and bring the war as a whole (in Europe anyway) to a more speedy conclusion, not to grab more Germany territory and deny it to the Soviets. I really doubt Montgomery cared about the zones (at least enough such that they would even form a secondary focus for his planning of an operation like Market-Garden), he probably just wanted the bloody fighting to be ended as soon as possible.
The timing of Market Garden also bring another question to mind:
Why are people referring to Market-Garden (second week in September) as one of the reason for Patton's halt at the end of August? Didn't the 21st Army Group have to start drawing on its own reserves entirely the day before Patton stopped? Kind of harsh to talk about the diversion of fuel elsewhere if the 21st Army Group was using mainly it's own stocks of supplies at least until sometime after September 10 (by which time both Patton and Montgomery would have been rather idle for over a week anyway).