Was there any point after 1941 that Hitler could have 'stopped' the war and the Allies not invade Germany?

by [deleted]

By 'stopped' I mean withdraw forces, surrender, etc.

BeondTheGrave

Well, surrender is always an option. But after 1941, any surrender attempt would have likely resulted in another Armistice, like the one German got in 1918. It would have been occupied regardless of the "magnanomy" of its surrender. An I doubt that the Soviets would have stopped short of occupying Berlin after December 1941.

And I think thats the real problem you have to wrestle with. David M. Glantz has a very interesting lecture on the Soviet-German War, and I think it really applies here. Glantz argues that after the Russian counter-attacks of the winter 1941/1942, the Germans lack the capacity to win a total victory, they only could only hope to dictate terms to the Soviets. But this was incompatible with Hitler's larger strategic goal: the subjugation of the USSR. Hitler wanted to destroy the Soviet Union, but by 1941 that was no longer possible. By the winter of 1942/43 it was no longer possible to win any kind of victory in the east, and following Kursk, it became impossible to save off total Soviet victory. But until the failure of Kursk, I think from the Nazi perspective, there was still the faint possibility of success against the Red Army, which would have precluded any sort of withdraw or surrender. And keep in mind, the Nazis hated Communists, and they killed millions of Soviets. In the East, surrender was never possible.

So to answer your question directly, no. The only way to have stopped World War Two was to have never started in the first place.