Without resorting to hindsight, the only way I can think of is change of ideology. Nazism was so virulent in creating enemies that it had no hope of succeeding in conquest.
Many of the peoples of the western SU did indeed greet the Germans as liberators (as one would expect from people oppressed by Stalin), and could have provided huge amounts of manpower. That way a German Empire of sorts could have been created in the east, but it probably would have fragmented soon after the war.
Of course, without Nazism the political development of the 30s would have been altogether different, so this all just idle speculation.
Edit: to further support my speculation, some people in the German military actually thought they were going on a new Northern Crusade to rid the world of the horrors of communism. Of course, any higher-ups who thought that were clearly in denial of the truth, but all the same it seems that such a stance would have been politically viable for a conqueror.
Many of the peoples of the western SU did indeed greet the Germans as liberators (as one would expect from people oppressed by Stalin), and could have provided huge amounts of manpower. That way a German Empire of sorts could have been created in the east, but it probably would have fragmented soon after the war.
Of course, without Nazism the political development of the 30s would have been altogether different, so this all just idle speculation.
Edit: to further support my speculation, some people in the German military actually thought they were going on a new Northern Crusade to rid the world of the horrors of communism. Of course, any higher-ups who thought that were clearly in denial of the truth, but all the same it seems that such a stance would have been politically viable for a conqueror.
Comment