SoD Stitch
Banned
The answer in a nutshell: Definitely.
The Germans wasted a huge amount of resources on dead-end projects. A good example is the super-heavy tank Maus. The Maus was a very impressive technical acheivement, but it was completely useless, even in the (non-mobile) defensive situation Germany found itself in in '45. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm guessing they could've built 10 Panther tanks for the amount of time and materiel it took to build one Maus; that would've been more practical (not to mention effective).
That being said, there were a couple of advanced projects that could've turned the tide if the Germans had invested more time and energy in them earlier on in the War. The Me 262 comes to mind, as does the Do 335, the E-series of German tanks proposed in '45, and the superlative Mauser MG 213 20/30mm cannon, which never entered production.
And, if Hitler hadn't had the aversion to "Jewish science" that he did, they might've developed atomic energy before '45; the theoretical basis was there, but Hitler considered nuclear physics a "Jewish science" and, hence, dismissed it out of hand; therefore, it got little to no backing from the Nazi government.
The Germans wasted a huge amount of resources on dead-end projects. A good example is the super-heavy tank Maus. The Maus was a very impressive technical acheivement, but it was completely useless, even in the (non-mobile) defensive situation Germany found itself in in '45. I don't have any hard numbers, but I'm guessing they could've built 10 Panther tanks for the amount of time and materiel it took to build one Maus; that would've been more practical (not to mention effective).
That being said, there were a couple of advanced projects that could've turned the tide if the Germans had invested more time and energy in them earlier on in the War. The Me 262 comes to mind, as does the Do 335, the E-series of German tanks proposed in '45, and the superlative Mauser MG 213 20/30mm cannon, which never entered production.
And, if Hitler hadn't had the aversion to "Jewish science" that he did, they might've developed atomic energy before '45; the theoretical basis was there, but Hitler considered nuclear physics a "Jewish science" and, hence, dismissed it out of hand; therefore, it got little to no backing from the Nazi government.