Before I read the latest post I have to interject for a moment. The coin has two sides, on the one is the war economy that produces the material needed to wage war. And it is an important factor how the strength of the economy translates into production.
But on the other side we can find the usage of the material produced. How well this material could be utilized (basically quality, which topic was touched, but it is a little bit more than that since it depends on suitability too) and how they utilized it (e.g. did they "trump" the other sides weaponry? were they used just to throw at the enemy preferring material loss over human? were they just wasted with surrenders? were they just put to into storage? etc.).
I know the scope of Tooze's work is on the economical background, but I feel he had some notion that the war was decided already purely by this factor even before the war started, and reading all this one might get the impression. It is because the focus is so much centered on this it really can cover our view and see the other factors, and we all know I hope that a war is decided by many factors. In this case one factor was very much against Germany and the Axis.