@Zooey72:
Not counting the atomic bomb, this is the weapon. Jets, rockets, and big tanks may be sexy; but at leasting doubling the combat capacity of every soldier is a war winner. The USSR would have surrendered in 1941 IMO, and that would have pretty much ended the war.
If you seriously believe this then you have, at best, only an elementary understanding of why Germany lost the war. Having the STG44 in the hands of the Wehrhmacht in 1941 would have done nothing, absolutely nothing to address the problems Germany faced in her war with the Soviet Union. A more capable small arm would not have addressed the imbalance in wartime production between the Axis and Allied powers, would not have made Barbarossa any less of a disorganized or disjointed plan of attack, and certainly would not have rectified Germany’s crippling manpower problem that reared its head shortly after the war in the east began.
Germany was completely and totally outmatched by its adversaries, and no single innovation or change to the timeline is going to give them a chance at winning the war. Many of the problems that beset the Wehrhmacht were endemic to the Nazi regime itself, and you can’t really address those without putting someone else in charge. The problem is that you can’t really do that either, both on account of the fact that if Hitler wasn’t in charge there’s a good chance the war never would have happened and because taking him out of the picture puts leaves you with a tonne of variables that makes it impossible to sort out what could have or would have happened.
