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One of the mountains of b/s I even find here on FR is "we bombed Germany and Japan to the stone age, we had no competition for our economy."

The fact is, according to the various post war 'Bombing Effectiveness Surveys' we only destroy less than 20% of Germany's industrial production.

Then add in the fact that Germany stopped food rationing long before the British did.

So who was the victors?

Even with the Norton bombsite it was difficult to hit specific targets. That's one of the reasons why saturation bombing and even fire bombing was adopted. So I'm not real surprised that we only took out about 20% of their industry.

Additionally, it wasn't entirely their goal anyway. Here's an excerpt from AWDP-1 which was the U.S. Army Air Corps basic war plan for air operation against Germany prepared in August of 1941 (before we were even in the war):

a. Possible Lines of Action. Based on an analysis of military and economic factors the following lines of actions for the air offensive can be set up for consideration.
1. Lines of action whose accomplishment will accomplish the air mission in Europe.
(a) Disruption of a major portion of the Electric Power System of Germany.
(b) Disruption of the German transportation system.
(c) Destruction of the German oil and petroleum system.
(d) Undermining of German morale by air attack of civil concentrations.

So we did have more targets than just industry anyway. Item 2 on that list goes over objectives against the Luftwaffe which represents another item all together.

"So who was the victors?"

Well, if you just add up the numbers killed and property destroyed, clearly the Germans won World War Two, because:

For every German, including civilians, who died five non-Germans were killed in Europe, half of them civilians.
For every German city bombed, at least one allied city was bombed.
For every German civilian killed by allied bombing, at least one allied civilian was killed by German bombing.
And the Nazis accomplished Hitler's number one war aim: they destroyed European Jewry.

Yes, after the war Russians took everything that could be moved from their zone. But on the other hand, within just a few years, the US Marshall Plan was helping to replace West German manufacturing with all new equipment.

Result is, Germany today is among the planet's most prosperous nations -- they not only live well, they take months of vacation in Spain and North Africa every year.

So I say Germans "won" the war. ;-)

Of course, if you ask Neo-Nazis, they'll tell you the Jews (i.e., Franklin "Rosenfelt") won the war. But I think they're just hoping to draw more attention to the Nazis' singular "accomplishment" -- the Holocaust.