We are in hypothetical land now, but I agree that even if Stauffenberg could have seized power I’m pretty sure the Big Three would have said, fine, but we want your unconditional surrender. The German Army and people were not there yet in mid-1944.
While we are in hypothetical land, we have not yet violated Henkster’s Law of alternate history. We don’t have to worry about Hitler not being Hitler because he’s...well...dead. But the Germans are still the Germans. And that means that they fight. I’ve always been amazed at their resiliency and willingness to put up a stout resistance in 1944 and 1945, even though intellectually they must know the war is lost.
But there were a number of them who were die-hard Nazis, and the Nazi ideology kept them going. It wasn’t until late January 1945 that you saw disintegration in the West. It never happened in the East, because of who they were fighting. If you take away the Nazi fanatics, who now have nothing to be fanatic about, you lose a lot of the hard edge of resistance. And once you start talking peace, the idea of being shot at by the guy on the other side is far less appealing. Without the Nazis, the average German just don’t have a reason to fight that hard in the west, if at all.
Yes, the German generals still run the show, but by now none of them are thinking offensively. There will be no Battle of the Bulge, which was only made possible by the last spasm of production by Speer’s armament industry. And the quality of strategic and operational thought on the German side has been on the wane for a while.
So, I think the German rot in the west starts almost immediately upon the public acknowledgement of peace feelers. And while the Germans will try to resist in the East, tax-chick is correct. The Russians are unstoppable.
My take is that the Red Army meets the Americans on the Oder, not the Elbe, and does so in November-December, not April.