Into The Fire: An Alternate History Mod

[bean1]

Is my eastern front map realistic, even remotely? I'm tempted to scale it down a bit, but that is the general idea for what I want to see.

WWII was extended in this alternate history into '46 following a successful Ardennes Offensive(I'm tempted to kill off Hitler as a key Point of Divergence), and some semblance of a temporary cease fire was established on the eastern front(with Germany being kicked out of most of Russia).

That's why I want to scale everything back-no point in adding a Baltic Germanic kingdom and larger Poland when Germany's war machine by '44 and '45 was hanging by a thread, with or without reinforcements from France.

Thoughts?

 

[datachild]

I can't imagine any "realistic" szenario that includes a german white peace with the SOVs by the end of 1944 without other changes before that. Therefore the only consequence of a successful Ardennes Offensive would be more land for the sovjets.
However you could create a szenario in which Manstein succeded in freeing the 6th army from Stalingrad. Thanks to the fame and military support of this action he was able to take a more active role during the defense of the eastern front (meaning he could demand things from Hitler and realise his visions of the defense) leading to some kind of successfull Operation Zitadelle but with a much more intact german force. Resulting this and maybe other encirclements the fights on the eastern front continued without tipping the favour for any side. In this case I would take a forntline along http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Eastern_Front_-_4_July-1_Aug_1943.jpg. Maybe some losses in the north with the freed manpower commited to the war in the west.
All this combined and you have a possible reason why the Ardennes Offensive where successful.
Only problem in this szenario are some really important resources (esp. Oil) that were needed to support the german war machine. For this reason you shouldn't give the resource rich Ukrainian region back to the SOVs. But even then I don't know where the Germans got their oil from. I think Romania wasn't enough.

 

[unmerged(332376)]

Stalin was highly despised in the Soviet Union, only fear kept him in power. That fear and dread would have subsided with Germany victory I think. The many different peoples of the Soviet Union would have risen up against Soviet rule, in fact the Germans should have acted more like liberators than conquering Jew and Slav haters they might have actually won. And if Germany had failed in capturing its strategic goals and utterly destroying Soviet resistance they would have bled so many supplies and men into the effort that eventually the Third Reich would have toppled over.

Not true at all... Maybe according to Western history textbooks Stalin was hated by his people, but if you talk with Soviet veterans of WW2 and others who lived through the time period, you would know that Stalin was an extremely popular ruler, revered as a demi-god by the population. Why? First of all, because of propoganda, and second of all, because people's quality of life improved massively during Stalin's reign.