That's interesting to speculate about and I agree but I think the political reality of the time made early direct confrontation extremely unlikely. After a decade of global depression nobody was really in a position to challenge them. All things considered, the one actor on stage at the time that stood the best chance in thwarting them was France. It's a whole different conversation as to why. I used to hear a lot of nonsense about 'I'll make you a good deal on a French rifle. Never been fired and only dropped once' Their fault lay in leadership and tactics. properly led and organized they should theoretically have been able to hold their own.
Big difference today though. At the time nobody could confront Nazi Germany's military strength. Now it's quite the opposite; it's obvious that the West has overwhelming quantitative, qualitative and organizational superiority. We could have quite literally turned that **** off in short order and ended it. Years ago the Russians were aghast that Iraq's state of the art defenses were so easily overwhelmed since they had been their primary supplier of advanced weaponry.
Nuclear weapons are the great equalizer and frankly, there isn't much to be done about it. I don't know what an effective deterrent to that would look like.