I don’t have a specialist’s expertise, more’s the pity, and would love to know more about what the denazification plan was before the end of the war — what was non-negotiable, what was flexible, and when it took shape. But it seems inherently plausible (without having the slightest direct evidence) that anything that *wasn’t* a collapse would have changed the successor German state(s)’s role in the US/USSR settlement, and the form and extent of denazification would then have been conditioned on the resulting exigencies of that relationship.

None of which, I admit, implies the necessary recurrence of the Dolchstosslegende.

I think in one place I can add to the discussion– the alternative endings to the war and aftermath of 1945 on. I think you underplay the damage done to Germany already at this point. The Germany of 1918 was much less damaged than Germany already was in 1944, and that lack of physical damage played into the myth of betrayal. The Germans of 1944 knew that they had been hit hard and that their enemies’ power was what was winning the war, not treason from within.

You also don’t take into account the potentially similar case of real-life Japan in 1945-46. What I mean is that Japan was ripe for the stab-in-the-back scenario just as your Hitler-killed Germany would be.

But the Allies knew all about that line of argument, and had taken steps already to counteract it in the post-war world. The first step in that plan was the Unconditional Surrender demand.

Under the conditions of unconditional surrender, a Japan that had not been invaded had her entire government dismantled at every level. Economic activity was under military government as well. In the end, as we know, General MacArthur was not only Shogun, he wrote the new Japanese constitution.

Plans to do similar things to Germany at the end of the war were already in place and all the Allies lacked was the opportunity. The de-Nazification of Germany was not a result of its complete conquest in May of 1945, but the result of implementation of existing plans.

So had the death of Hitler in the plot led to Germany’s immediate collapse, the occupation, partition, military government, martial law and de-Nazification of 1945 would merely have commenced in 1944.

P.S. Just as General Fromm tried to cover up his complicity by executing the chief plotters, I believe that the reason Hitler is regarded as so dumb a general is due to a similar intent. Hitler is the “blundering general” because of the surviving ones having a chance to blame him for every defeat and miscalculation that they themselves made.