if hitler had decided to invade the middle east instead of Russian- like his generals wanted to do, but he was more concerned about his beef with Stalin than strategy; we would have had a very different outcome to the war. (at the very least, far more protracted.)

The reason the generals wanted to invade the middle east was because they were all using WW1-era cast offs and had almost negligible military. They beleived they could have- to use the modern perjorative- Roflstomped the middle eastern powers and achieved the same ostensible goal: access to crude oil.

Fortunately, Hitler was a fucking insane nutjob. And so is trump.