1) If the allies occupy Germany and move up to prewar positions as part of the truce(as it would have to be for Germany), would Stalin really start a war with the allies to "get his pound of flesh"?
2) I never really understood this one, Soviet involvement in the Far East is a nightmare. All it really did OTL is ensure that China falls to Mao instead of Chiang and cut Korea in half. Say what you will about good old "Uncle Joe" he was the next rival, even then.
3) Why would it be a disaster? If the people in charge of starting the war and committing the atrocities were all arrested, suddenly it's not a war to liberate Europe, the Germans pretty much took care of that, it's just a war to crush Germany, even after they've shown they're all not that bad. As for Japan, seems to me getting them to surrender earlier can only benefit the Asian situation as it would be handing Manchuria to Chiang instead of Mao, and likely giving all of Korea to the Allies.
4) Same point, if the Germans cleaned their own house and owned up to it all, how could it be any worse than it was OTL when we waltzed into the death camps?
1. Were are the U.S. and UK going to stop? The Elbe? If so, fine. Otherwise there will be hell to pay as far as Soviet involvement in
2. the war against Japan. In all the recent debate about the end game against Japan in another thread one thing that is not even questioned was the impact of the Soviets going after the Kwantung Army. It was that action
combined with the Bombs that gave the Peace Party in Japan the window to surrender. The Soviet intervention in the Pacific War was not what "lost" China. The utter inability of Kuomintang to act in even a mildly compentent manner, despite the support of the U.S., when facing the CCP was the reason that Mao wound up ruling China.
3. Unconditional Surrender had been drummed into every American. It was accepted as the only way to be sure that American boys wouldn't be dying in the Argonne AGAIN in 1960. It was a given that you had to crush the Nazis and the Japanese. The U.S. had spent several years, using the very best film makers on Earth to shape that message and serve it up in every single media.
As far as how much of a disaster accepting a conditional end in the ETO would have created in the PTO that would seem to require no comment at all. The Japanese were, even after the fall of Okinawa, deluding themselves with the belief that they could keep their gains in China and give the Emperor veto power over anything they agreed to at a peace table.
4. How many are going to be arrested? Most of the Heer senior leadership was guilty as sin. The Heer wasn't going to take their own people in hand. How could you trust that sort of people to "clean things up" on their own? The evidence that they would do something as dreadful as the camps would make fairly clear that they need to be dealt with in a signficiant way.
Also, how bad IS Germany? It is worth remembering that we are not talking about American and British voters who have seen Germany as a fried and ally against the Red Menace for four decades or so. This was the second time in a generation that the U.S. had been forced to cross the Atlantic to deal with the "Krauts". Most Americans, and virtually every British subject, knew someone (or knew someone who had a family member) who had died in the Great War fighting the "Huns". My grandmother almost had a stroke when I took German as my foreign Language elective in the 1970's because "the Germans are bad people".
Overall, these sorts of POD need to account for how the people of the era viewed the Reich and generally fail to do so. I try to always use "the Reich" when discussing WW II Germany because it is indicitive of how the West looked at Germany. It was a monolith, Nazi to the core, fascist, evil, untrustworthy in every way. "Left the job undone in 1918; not going to make that mistake again" was a common belief.
Was that true? Good question and perhaps one for a separate thread, but it WAS how the West looked at the country. Any review of this sort of a POD has to keep that in constant view.