This quote is purely for understanding and decision making, Hitler got distracted by the concept of terror rather than strategy. All terrorist have the same problem, assuming that it will get their means, but they lost just as WWII Germany Lost.
Albert Spier: Inside the Third Reich
As early as September 10, 1942, I had warned Hitler in the tank production of Friedrichshafen and ballbearing facilities in Schweinfurt were crucial to our whole effort Hitler thereupon ordered increased antiaircraft production for these two cities. Actually, as I had early recognized, the war could largely have been decided in 1943 if instead of vast but pointless area bombing the planes had concentrated on the centers of armaments production. On April 11, 1943, I proposed to Hitler that a committee of industrial specialist be set to determining the crucial targets in Societ power production. Four weeks later, however, the first attempt was made -- not by us by the British air force -- to influence the course of the war by destroying a single nerve center of the war economy. The principle followed was to paralyze a cross section, as it were -- just as a motor can be made useless by the removal of the ignition. On May 17, 1943, a mere nineteen bombers of the RAF tried to strike ar our whole armaments industry by destroying the hydroelectric plants of the Ruhr.
. . .
The British had not succeeded, however in destroying the three other reservoirs. Had they done so. the Ruhr Valley would have been almost completely deprived of water in coming summer months. At the largest of the reservoirs, the Sorpe Valley reservoir, they did achieve a direct hit on the center of the dam. I inspected it that same day. Fortunately, the bomb hole was slightly higher than the water level. Just a few inches lower - and a small brook would have been transformed into a raging river which would have swept away the stone and earthen dam. That night, just employing just a few bombers came close to a success which would have been greater than anything they had achieve hitherto with a commitment of thousands of bombers. But they made a single mistake which puzzles me to this day: they divided their forces and that same night destroyed the Eder Valley dam, although it had nothing whatsoever to do with the supply of water to the Ruhr.
A few days after this attack seven thousand men, whom I had ordered shifted from the Atlantic Wall to the Mohne and Eder areas, were hard at work repairing the dams. On September 23, 1943, in the nick of time before the beginning of the rains, the breach in the Mohne dam was closed. We were thus able to collect the precipitation of the late autumn and winter of 1943 for the needs of the following summer. While we were engaged in rebuilding, the British air forced missed its second chance. A few bombs would have produced cave-ins at the exposed building sites, and a few firebombs could have set the wooden scaffolding blazing.
After these experience, I wondered once again why our Lluftwaffe, with its by now reduced forces, did not launch similar pinpoint attacks whose effects could be devastating. At the end of May 1943, two weeks after the British raid, I reminded Hitler of my idea of April 11 that a group of experts might pinpoint the key industrial targets is the enemy camp. But as so often, Hitler proved irresolute. "I'm afraid that the General Staff of the air force will not want to take advice from your industrial associates. I too have broached such a plan to General Jeschonek several times. "But" he concluded in rather a resigned tone, "you speak to him about it sometime." Evidently, Hitler was not going to do anything about this; He lacked any sense of the decisive importance of such operations.
