Ignoring the slapfight with the wignat on the verge of trooning out:
I think there were some key decision points where, if they'd gone differently, Germany had a much better shot at a much better outcome than after Hitler took command in 1941. After this point, the Germans continued to make one bad decision after another, losing divisions and even entire armies to Hitler's hubris, with nothing to show for it. They may not have conquered Russia, but Russian tanks wouldn't have made it to Berlin, either. It's much easier to defend against advancing invaders when you didn't lose everything to STAND FAST!!! orders and continually remove anyone from command who successfully engages in mobile force-multiplying defense tactics. Perhaps in alternate history, the Japanese attack the USSR in the east, not the USA, D-Day doesn't happen, Hitler doesn't assume command of the armed forces, and German takes both Moscow and Leningrad, pushing the USSR back to a rump state east of the Volga. Or maybe the Soviet counteroffensive is stopped at the Dnieper, and an armistice is signed. Hitler invents some reason in his mind for why the Lebensraum doesn't really need to go to the Volga, and pisses all over his empire until his death in 1970.
I agree with others above. Hitler had no plan of succession. Unlike Communism, which is an apocalyptic utopian cult, Nazism was a cult of personality. Without Hitler, it had no ability to sustain itself. Unlike modern neo-Marxists, who don't care much about the USSR or Lenin, modern neo-Nazis are more obsessed with Hitler and WW2 than political theory and action. Nazi Germany was and would continue to be an economic turd, as autocrats are inevitably unable to resist command-and-control economics. It wouldn't have been as bad as Communism, but then, nobody has ever invented a worse economic system than Communism; it's the absolute nadir of human productivity. German rule hardly eliminates the nationalist sentiments that led to the fall of empires in the late nineteenth century and WW1, and when Hitler dies, the succeeding government is torn apart by various factions. You have people fighting over who is the true successor to Hitler, whether there should be republican rule, and, in the midst of this, nationalist factions in France, Greece, and the East being splintering the empire as an actual geopolitical entity.
