At the tail end of the war, those Luftwaffe pilots were flying some pretty damn advanced planes, with some pretty awful inherent problems. But the follow on designs (Mig-15 et al) were in service for quite some time after the war. The rate of advance of German industry despite massive aerial assault and savage ground wars is fascinating. I recommend reading Gitta Sereny's biography of Albert Speer. Among other rather less impressive acts (extent debated, but likely involvement in genocide, definitely involved in slave labour organisation etc) he rearranged German industry such the production increases were occurring right up until the very final stages of the war. The major industrial output declined started about early '45 or late '44 from memory, which given the volume of allied bombs dropped speaks to German organisation, allied bomb accuracy, or both!
Was the fuel shortage due to bombing or Russians taking the oil fields? I had thought it was nearly entirely due to Russian advance, but the below article makes it seem otherwise. It quotes Speer saying how effective allies bombings were, but it is dated May 1944, which is quite late in the piece given that the tide turned, although this may have been less clear as it was still pre Normandy (just). Interesting fact from that article - the treaty with Russia gained Germany 4m barrels a year, and the subsequent invasion only gained them about the same. Are the numbers misleading? Did Germany still need to process the oil it imported, making relatively small domestic production less relevant and the processing facilities critical?
http://vanrcook.tripod.com/Germanfuelshortage.htm
