Deleted member 1487
Because there isn't much of one to refute other than you not liking what he's saying. If you read that specific passage it is pretty hard to refute with the numbers you listened, which were full year numbers not the numbers per month of the period he discusses; it was perfectly within the subject he is covering, which is the Germany economy; strategic bombing was relevant to that topic.I'm not hearing any actual refutation of the argument...
Get a copy from the library and read it yourself.
I've posted this repeatedly in our discussions, but you never seem to get it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Ruhr#Outcome
In his study of the German war economy, Adam Tooze stated that during the Battle of the Ruhr, Bomber Command severely disrupted German production. Steel production fell by 200,000 tons. The armaments industry was facing a steel shortfall of 400,000 tons. After doubling production in 1942, production of steel increased only by 20 percent in 1943. Hitler and Speer were forced to cut planned increases in production. This disruption resulted in the Zulieferungskrise (sub-components crisis). The increase of aircraft production for the Luftwaffe also came to an abrupt halt. Monthly production failed to increase between July 1943 and March 1944. "Bomber Command had stopped Speer's armaments miracle in its tracks".[23]
At Essen after more than 3,000 sorties and the loss of 138 aircraft, the "Krupps works...and the town...itself contained large areas of devastation"[4] Krupps never restarted locomotive production after the second March raid.[4]
Operation Chastise caused some temporary effect on industrial production, through the disruption of the water supply and hydroelectric power. The Eder Valley dam "had nothing whatsoever" to do with supplying the Ruhr Area.[24] A backup pumping system had already been put in place for the Ruhr, and Speer's Organisation Todt rapidly mobilized repairs, taking workers from the construction of the Atlantic Wall. The destruction of the Sorpe dam would have caused significantly more damage but since it was a stronger design less likely to be breached it was effectively a secondary target.
Extremely unlikely that a single company or company equivalent number of men made a difference to any division.A more valid point. But given how overstretched the Germans were... well, I could see the absence of a single company leading to the defeat of a division that wouldn't have happened otherwise IOTL causing a cascading effect in the summer-autumn of 1941 as I outlined above. Vastly less probable then the absence of a full division. But far more probable is that the absence of those companies are felt in the winter of '41/'42, given how skeletonized many German infantry divisions were by then. Losing the 9th Army to encirclement at Rzhev may not accelerate the end of the war by as much as Barbarossa stalling out around Smolensk-Kiev, but it will nevertheless accelerate the end of the war.
Not guaranteed, but a possibility nonetheless.
In 1944 they had a radio and electro-static project, which would be the two routes they would have in the scenario I'm suggesting, as the restarted work in 1942 was the stuff that was being worked on when things were cancelled in 1940.Leaving aside the scarcity of German industrial resources preventing mass production and the fact that the Germans were heading down a different path to proxy fuses and the uselessness of the V-1... how do you propose they develop a jammer to something we still haven't figured out how to jam today? More so, how do you propose they develop a jammer portable enough to be fitted onto a platform as unstable as the V-1 without upsetting it's deployment?
What are you talking about? The US had a jammer for the VT fuse before they deployed it. It was extremely simplistic:
http://www.smecc.org/proximity_fuze_jamming_-_w_w__salisbury.htm
Something broadcasting on all frequencies that reaches out a 100 meters even with WW2 tech can be made quite small.