Isn't it funny how when anybody gets massacred in an argument, they fall back on the "agree to disagree" gambit. Riain, Michele has slaughtered you, be a man and admit it by conceding the argument.
Well, I think Raising taxes somewhat is probably the safest of the above ideas--maybe throw in large scale Nationalization and Privatization of Jewish owned businesses to create a revenue stream. Perhaps that's a direction to explore--Untermensch assets are seized and auctioned at discount to raise money to pay for the military industrial complex.
As others have pointed out, this was pretty much done so its already included in the existing data. There's very little else to use for this process. However, a different cut on it would be
not to do this. The process involved a lot of economic disruption which has a cost all of its own and its possible to argue that cost penalty could have been avoided had the Germans not gone in for this process. However, not doing it would require a fundamental change in Nazi ideology and that takes us into ASB territory.
Arms sales to pro-Axis governments still seems like a good idea--it would increase efficiency through economics of scale, while getting at least some level of funding. The gains to Germany are probably incremental instead of decisive, but even if Italy or Finland only buy a handful the resultant cash flows are going to be needed.
It requires major armaments sales to make any significant difference to the economic scene and I just don't see the customers for adequate quantities. I think the problem is that you're back-tracking today's situation where there are a small number of primary suppliers and a large number of customers to the late 1930s. The problem is that it was a totally different situation back then. Most countries could build a substantial proportion of their own requirements and the ones that couldn't were pretty insignificant in the broader scheme of things. Their orders were equally insignificant. For example, today Australia is talking about purchasing 100 F-35s at around USD85 million each for a total uf US$8.5 billion dollars. Go back to the late 1930s and orders of 100 aircraft from another country are pretty rare (the huge French orders for American aircraft stand out simply because they were so unusual); orders of a dozen or so aircraft (at around US$50,000 each) were much more common. Even allowing for the difference in currency values, that's still three orders of magnitude difference in total value; buying 12 Me-109s is about US$8 million in today's money converting by the gasoline index). Also, back in 1939, a lot of countries were primary arms producers; for example the Thais built their own aircraft (the Boripatra bomber); it may not have been up to much but they built it.
Finally, arms exports consume raw materials in their country of production. In effect, they exchange raw materials for foreign currency. So, if raw materials are the major constraint (as Michele has so ably demonstrated) export orders take place to the detriment of production for home use. A major export order in 1938 will mean a significant weakening of the home forces in 1939. Taking that one step further, since Germany was importing its raw materials so the total process is this
Production step converts money to raw materials for product
Sales step converts product to money
The asmount of money gained isn't the value of the equipment exported, its the value added in the production process, a lot less than the unit cost of the equipment sold.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that exporting military equipment isn't going to help.
Cutting the Siegfried line's funding at least partially would probably be a good move.
Only if one knows what is going to happen in 1940 four years before the fact. Without that knowledge, the West Wall is an essential piece of engineering. Looking at things with the eyes of the times, the most likely result of 1940 will be a deadlocked front like that of 1914-1918 and in that case, the West Wall is essential engineering. The West Wall expenditure is very much like that on an insurance policy; if you know, beyond any doubt, that you're not going to have a car accident or your house is not going to burn down next year, then money spent on insurance is wasted. On the other hand if you don't have insurance and you have a major capital loss, then you're in deep doo-doo.
The Lynchpin of my strategy, though, is German investment in R&D that recoups the original investment and more. Germany invested in "Wunderwaffen" that had little real return even in the most successful cases and mostly were a cash sink in the worst ones. What about a more grounded R&D system that focused on refinements and evolutionary designs rather than far-out weapons with little chance of success. (Granted, this means no German nuke, but that wasn't coming soon anyhow.)
The only real problem here is one rarely knows what is going to be the result of a specific R&D line. The wunderwaffe investment was a post 1939 phenomenom so it really doesn't affect the point at issue here. That doesn't mean that I disagree with your basic point, the so-called wunderwaffe (actually they were nothing of the sort) were a total waste of resources. I just don't see that cutting back on R&D would have been helpful in the time period in question. In fact, the reverse could be the case; in the early 1940s, Germany did cut back heavily on the R&D side of things in favor of concentrating on things that would be available for a "short war" so I don;t see there is flexibility here for a resources transfer that would have made any difference.
Instead of Tiger Tanks, Germany starts producing body armor and assault rifles.
Different resource consumption lines. By the way, body armor as we know it today didn't and couldn't exist in the late 1930s, the materials needed simply didn't exist and nobody knew they could exist. It is true that the USAAF issued its bomber crews with flak jackets, but these were years later, very heavy, very clumsy and only suited for use by people who were not moving around. The first real use of body armor was in the Korean War and it was only effective against small, low-velocity fragments. It was Vietnam before protective armor was actually of great tactical value. By the way, what made modern body armor feasible was the shift to intermediate power rifle rounds like the 5.56x45mm or 7.62x39mm that reduced the threat level. In 1939, pretty much everybody was shooting full-power rifle rounds and they'll go through even a modern set of body armor (a 7.62x54R AP round will go right through modern armor even with interceptor plates - as quite a few of our people found out in Iraq.)
As to assault rifles, I don't see they could have arrived any earlier than they did, the development rate is set by too many other factors. Finally, the research for Tiger tanks isn't a set-aside item, its a part of tank R&D in general. So you can't just cut it. Otherwise, the Germany Army will go into Russia in 1941 with Pz-IIIs and Pz-IVs and no hope of anything better. The inevitable result of that will be 1944 seeing the Russians liberate Germany all the way to the Rhine.
Instead of Rockets, it creates its own radar stations and computers.
The Germans had radar and had no idea computers as you're describing them existed. They didn't until the early 1960s. So your forst proposal is what happened, your second isn't possible.
This might mean that Germany has no clue that nuclear weapons are coming or that the allies are reading their codes, but this kind of preference for short bets in R&D rather than longshots would probably play heavily to Germany's advantage--at least until the nukes start coming.
These aren't short-shots as you call them, they're just as long as the ones the Germans did try to pull. They're different long shots I agree but still long ones.
Germany, though, is going to need a brilliant guy in charge of its economy to get this to work--Perhaps Schacht serves in this role instead of being fired and later locked in a concentration camp?
They had one. It doesn't change the basic situation.
As for cost cutting in the army, perhaps Germany uses an Israeli system to force its entire population to serve in the army--if manpower becomes a problem, Hitler can decide that Aryan women will beat the daylights out of Slavic men.
But who then runs industry? Or works in it? Who grows food? or drives the logistics system? The Israeli system is fine if you're going to have a war that lasts a couple of weeks at the outside. Beyond that its national suicide. As for the women idea, if it came to pitching German women against Russian women I know who my money is on and the losers speak German. Anyway, you really want to take Russian front casualties hitting the people who will be bearing the next generation? Quite apart from the fact that tossing women into the front line runs right against Nazi ideology and doing so means a complete change in the way the Party thinks. Not really plausible on any great scale.
Having said that, some German women did fight in the front line in the last days of 1945 (Beevor's book mentions them as does Eriksson's Road to Berlin). They did very badly and essentially got killed for nothing.
Very badly I fear. The ASBs (lazy little beasts) are rustling their wings in concern at the amount of work involved.