I suspect you may be underestimating both the magnitude of Speer's accomplishments in industrial rationalization, and consequently the magnitude of effects from the strategic bombing effort itself.
As Humble put it :
German industrial infrastructure was decentralized and underutilized before the war. Further almost all german production was single shift thru out the war and few women were in the workforce. Many factories had excess tooling and some entire production lines were not in use even in 1943. The German war industry was actually less efficient then any other so it absorbed alot of "losses" without an adverse effect on productivity.
This perfectly illustrates one of the greatest pre-war misconceptions held about the effects of strategic bombing on industrialized societies. While it can be argued that the USAAF daylight bombing did reduce the German maximum industrial
potential, actual production was much more limited by the inefficiencies inherent to all civilian, non-planned economies and thus flexible and adaptable to the effects of bombing. You could say that the USAAF forced the Germans to be more efficient in spite of themselves, though I doubt that will seem like an acceptable reason to those that lost loved ones over Germany.
However, like Widewing, I also suspect that all words spent taking a view different than yours are wasted.
The point of debate is not to change peoples minds, but to share information and points of view and broaden all our perspectives. If your intensions are to change my mind then you very well might fail (or perhaps not?), but your words are not wasted. Not to me at least.
First, you shrug off the manpower diversion effects by claiming the Germans so employed were not fit for front line service. I suppose that also means they weren't fit to work in factories or otherwise contribute to the total war effort; in fact, if it weren't for the air assault on Germany those men would likely have been completely dependent on government handouts for their sustenence. Logically, then, the strategic bombing campaign actually helped Germany's economic production by maximizing efficiency in an otherwise useless manpower pool!
Obviously ridiculous, but it's the corollary of your assertion that the manpower diversion had trivial effects. Since the implications of your claim are unsustainable, then logically the statement on which they were based must be incorrect. Even if we accept your unsubstantiated claim that those men weren't fit for the front lines, the diversion of so many from production of necesssity must be considered an indirect economic consequence of the bombing.
First of all you add false factors to my original statement and extrapolate an absurd argument from it which you then attribute to me. As argumentative fallacies go that one is a Doozy.
Secondly, shortfalls in the labour force due to the manpower demands of the war was compensated by compulsory workers from the occupied western territories and slave labour from the east. This was one of Speers greatest achievements and crimes. There was no lack of industrial manpower in the Reich, and unlike the Japanese the Germans didnt send its skilled workers to the warfront.
Also I have never said there was
no economic effect of the USAAF bombing campaign, just that the effect was
"little" and not worth the effort.
Second - the line of reasoning that claims redistribution of production to dispersed, often underground factories negated the effects ofbombing. Again, consider the corrolary...can we say that dispersion and underground manufacturing improved efficiencies? If so, wouldn't underground dispersed manufacturing be tha norm in other countries during the 1940s, and even today? On the contrary we see the exact opposite movements throughout the next half century: economic efficiency applies incredible pressure AWAY from small dispersed operations and toward centralization and economies of scale. Only with the globalization shifts made possible by technologic advances and reduced trade barriers do we see dispersion, and even then economies of scale reign. How many underground factories operate in your neighborhood?
German production was already dispersed before the war (though not underground). And your assertion that production was not dispersed in post war economies is wrong. Even if ownership of assets were increasingly centralized in large conglomerates the actual production assets were still geographically dispersed in any given country. Also smaller factories with suitable tooling were subcontracted to increase production further increasing dispersing and reducing vulnerability to bombing.
As you can see even in 1939 the production and assembly of Ju 88 airframes was well distributed through subcontracting.
In my neighbourhood there are several underground production and storage facilities. Most are part of the power and oil industry. Also being a neighbour to Russia has been an incentive to better protect out national assets.
Third come some very complex and in depth economic studies developed by post war economic historians. These go far beyond the graphs you've posted, because neither you, nor I, nor most post war data compilers have the background in economics to place simple output graphs in their appropriate context -- the entire econoic system of a country. I need to interrupt this for work duties, but I'll come back to review issues raised in a book I recently struggled through.
Ill wait with anticipation.
