After going over Germany's losses throughout most of World War II, and it never ceases to amaze me just how unnecessary many of them were. The sheer number of German divisions lost due to the stubbornness of Hitler on the Eastern Front is staggering as I'm sure most of you know. This is also shown on the western front, the Falaise pocket being but one example.
My question here is what if German losses had been a good deal less severe throughout the war? A POD at the very start of the war in 1939 is allowed, with the goal being to reduce German losses significantly - especially on the Eastern Front - to the point where Germany can fairly easily make it into 1946, while still having them ultimately sue for peace in the face of inevitable defeat.
The earliest major POD that I can think of off the top of my head is a Battle of Britain that was significantly less damaging to the Luftwaffe. A stronger Luftwaffe will not only greatly help on the Eastern Front, but will protect Germany itself from the devastating bombing campaigns of the allied powers. This alone would greatly improve Germany's chances of lasting till 1946.
The second major POD that comes up is to have Germany suffer substantially less casualties on the Eastern Front - for example, the classic Battle of Stalingrad. Perhaps a significant portion of the German army was able to escape from the battle in this timeline. This of course requires Hitler to be more willing to listen to his General's pleas to retreat, but for the sake of actually staying on topic and not having this develop into a debate on Hitler's personality, we will say he is capable of occasionally seeing the light of reason ITTL.
To decrease German losses on the Eastern Front, we will say that not only Stalingrad, but nearly every major battle that sees entire German armies encircled and destroyed is avoided by a timely retreat. Extremely optimistic, I know, but that is the idea here. Also, I believe a certain General within the Heer proposed a strategy that involved retreating from any disadvantageous position, and then counterattacking in force with the enemy became vulnerable. I forget it's name, but somebody here probably knows it. I think this would do wonders for Germany's performance in the east.
We also want less German losses in France and Italy, but we still want the Normandy landings to happen. The breakout of the Normandy pocket can be delayed however, and the aforementioned Falaise pocket should certainly be avoided. The battle to liberate France should last a lot longer in this timeline, with far more German troops available this isn't a difficult thing to do so long as the leadership is competent - no death of Rommel will help there. I'm imagining a very bloody Battle of Paris sometime in 1945...
Soviet losses in the east should be even higher than in the OTL. With the previous strategy that I mentioned, they should really be hurting by 1945, and even more so by 1946. By the start of the year, they should be truly exhausted. You've heard the 2/3rds casualty figure for the WWII generation of Soviet males, correct? Well here I believe it would be even higher, so the Soviet Army is truly at its limit by 1946.
And I know someone will bring up the inevitable American attempt to nuke the Reich. If, in addition to suffering far less casualties in the BoB in 1940, Hitler allows for the ME-262 to be produced as a fighter as it was intended to be, while also not wasting time, labor and resources on the Vengeance rocket project but instead shifting those resources solely towards fighter production, I can see the Luftwaffe being strong enough over Germany to prevent a nuke being dropped for at least several months.
Here is a VERY makeshift and rudimentary map I made of the general situation on January 1st 1946. Ignore the borders of the axis states in eastern Europe, I've simply colored them a lighter shade of gray to represent them being axis allies. Finland is already out of the war. The western and southern fronts are subject to debate, as is the east to an extent.
In any case, at some point in early 1946, the Wehrmacht, tired of Hitler's stubborn refusal to see the gravity of their situation which, while not as bad as IOTL is still looking grim overall, successfully assassinates the mad Fuehrer, defeating Himmler and his SS cronies in the process. They establish a military government which asks the western allies for peace. They wish to end the war, but do not wish for an unconditional surrender, as they believe it will mean the destruction of Germany. What terms do you believe they can get? This is really the whole point of this scenario after all: Getting Germany into a position where they are still clearly losing, but are not yet defeated and still have room to negotiate.
For the record we'll say the war in the Pacific went historically for the most part, and is over by 1946.