Patton pushes on (what if)

[PanzerJaeger]

The only way the western allies could have possibly hold their own in Europe in 1945 would have been the use of the defeated German army. Given the hatred for and fear of the "Jewish-Bolshevist" Sovietunion almost all soldiers would have fought against it. As a matter of fact many Germans fought that eventually the Allies would fight with them against the Soviets for the "defense" of Europe. With the massive amount of material and ressources at the disposal of the West and the experienced manpower of the German forces even the migthy Red army could have been overcome...

The German military was fairly spent at that point, but certainly many within the captured leadership would have been pressed into advisory positions - as they were during the Cold War.

[Oleander Ardens]

I will tackle the answers one after the other:

First of all it is impossible to know who things could have evolved in a WW3, but I will lay down some of my thoughts.

a) The point of the political feasability of a "German inclusion" so fresh after the German occupations is a very important one. It is almost impossible to think that the population of countries which have suffered so much from German hands would join forces against a "liberator" like the Red army. The communist forces/tendencies were also very strong in countries like France and Italy which would have caused most likey marxist revolutions.

b) However it is a matter of fact that before the very last months/weeks of the war and the capitulation the German army was the most powerful land force after the Red Army which proved to be surprisingly resilient against all the odds. Without it's inclusion or the possible use of atomic bombs against the Sovietunion it would have been impossible to stop the soviet conquest of all continental Europe in a short period of time.