What would the comparitive end cost in lives and property have been if everyone in Europe had just let Hitler have his way? Don't fight, just surrender. Paris never burned, after all. The U.S. would just stay out of it.

At some point, Hitler and Stalin would probably have had it out anyway, and that would have cost a lot of lives, particularly in the U.S.S.R., but Hitler, fighting only on that front, might have won.

But the Reich colonies in Western Europe may never have seen a shot fired in anger from that conflict. No D-Day, no battle of Europe, no Dresdens. No Jews either, but that's another story.

Without the bombing of Peenemunde, Von Braun keeps working for the Germans, and his tech becomes their tech instead of our tech. By the 1950s, things would have become rather interesting.

To do this right, and get actual numbers, would require going over the events of the war step by step and then seeing where it would go from there. A lot of work.

But what if?

In modern terms, this path of least resistance is called the "Dhimmi Option."