Marcelo Jenisch
Active member
They are called intangibles because you can not measure there value, it may have been that the bombing of Germany was the decissive action of the war but you can not place an actual value on the action therefore it is intangible.
Wel...
The impact of bombing on German morale was significant according to Professor John Buckley. Around a third of the urban population under threat of bombing had no protection at all. Some of the major cities saw 55-60 percent of dwellings destroyed. Mass evacuations were a partial answer for six million civilians, but this had a severe impact on morale as German families were split up to live in difficult conditions. By 1944 absenteeism rates of 20-25 percent were not unusual and in post-war analysis 91 percent of civilians stated bombing was the most difficult hardship to endure and was the key factor in the collapse of their own morale.[150] The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the bombing was not stiffening morale but seriously depressing it; fatalism, apathy, defeatism were apparent in bombed areas. The Luftwaffe was blamed for not warding off the attacks and confidence in the Nazi regime fell by 14 percent. Some 75 percent of Germans believed the war was lost in the spring of 1944, owing to the intensity of the bombing.[151]
Buckley argues the German war economy did indeed expand significantly following Albert Speer’s appointment as Reichsminister of Armaments, "but it is spurious to argue that because production increased then bombing had no real impact". But the bombing offensive did do serious damage to German production levels. German tank and aircraft production, though reached new records in production levels in 1944, was in particular one-third lower than planned.[17] In fact, German aircraft production for 1945 was planned at 80,000, "which gives an idea of direction Erhard Milch and the German planners were pushing", "unhindered by Allied bombing German production would have risen far higher".[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_II
And:
by September 1943, 8,876 of the deadly, dual purpose 88 mm guns were also defending the homeland with a further 25,000 light flak guns – 20/37 mm. The 88mm gun was an effective AA weapon, it was a deadly destroyer of tanks and lethal against advancing infantry. These weapons would have done much to augment German anti-tank defences on the Russian front.
To man these weapons the flak regiments in Germany required some 90,000 fit personnel, and a further 1 million were deployed in clearing up and repairing the vast bomb-damage caused by the RAF attacks. To put this into perspective General Erwin Rommel's German forces defending Normandy in 1944 comprised 50,000 men, and their resistance caused the Western Allies grave problems.
This diversion to defensive purposes of German arms and manpower was an enormous contribution made by RAF Bomber Command to winning the war. By 1944 the bombing offensive was costing Germany 30% of all artillery production, 20% of heavy shells, 33% of the output of the optical industry for sights and aiming devices and 50% of the country's electro-technical output which had to be diverted to the anti-aircraft role.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command
You told this is intangible, can't be measured. Ultimately it cannot (how the Germans would use such resources and the Soviets react). But, you can estimate it, yes. Economical and military aspects can be united to provide a picture of the German and Soviet potentials in such a scenario. This is exactly the same thing the folks who do war simulations about hypotetical scenarios do. So, there's no way to prove that were the Soviets who really defeat the Germans, or even less that the Germans would be defeated by the Soviets alone. This is what makes the conflict a global one.
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