What if the 20th of July 1944 Hitler has been "terminated"

[PanzerJaeger]

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I don't think this is correct.
Germany had a raw industrial output larger than the Soviet Union and Britain combined. Germany also had an industrial labour force twice the size of the SU.

I was referring to armaments production, in which Germany could not have attained parity with Russia even with a total war economy for a number of reasons.

The Nazis were simply not all that good in making smart decisions, in using their favourable position.

Yes and no. Which Nazis are you talking about? Which time period are you talking about? The Nazis certainly made many more intelligent decisions than the French and British leadership both diplomatically and militarily in the prelude to the war and the first two years. The invasion of the USSR was, of course, a fiasco fueled by arrogance from previous campaigns. The proper planning and foresight that allowed for the decimation of the French and British forces in the West was not carried out, despite warnings from some in the military hierarchy. However, in spite of the sloppiness and haste that went into its preparation, Barbarossa almost succeeded. Some have speculated that a few more armored divisions would have tipped the scale. The failure led to a drawn out war, for which Germany was definitely not prepared. This was by far the Nazi... Hitler's biggest mistake, and slowly drained the lifeblood out of Germany. As the war progressed, both Hitler and Goering, the two most important men to the military situation, became strung out on narcotics and made many more poor decisions.

While it can certainly be said that the invasion of Russia was a monumental mistake, it was one miscalculation that had a not insignificant chance of success. Had that happened, Germany would have won WW2.

For the record, I'm not defending the Nazi political leadership. When they got involved in military decision making, their meddling was devastating. I just don't think such blanket statements paint the most accurate picture possible.

Ignoring moral issues and simply focusing on goal attainment (and assuming Hitler's goals were the military domination of Europe), the Nazis made a lot of intelligent decisions up front and made one critical mistake from which they could not extricate themselves. The French and British made highly ignorant decisions and were lucky to be bailed out by the US and Russia, who both made the wisest decisions of the war and propelled themselves into world domination after the fact.

For example, they made high-tech equipment that was useless in the extreme circumstances in Russia. Russians knew better - one must rely on cheap, simple and therefore sturdy equipment. These work, these are low maintanance, and these can be mass produced in great numbers. On top of this, Germany also managed to rely in crucial aspects on low-tech equipment, which rendered much of their fancier equipment useless. For example, a reliance on horses to tow this fancy equipment around, against mobile mechanised Russians.

Can you elaborate? Which "fancy" equipment was towed around by horses? How was it then rendered useless? It is well known that the majority of German forces relied on horses (as sufficient numbers of trucks were unavailible), but off the top of my head I cannot think of any fancy equipment that was towed by horses. I can only think of run-of-the-mill type stuff like artillery, wagons, etc.

Stalin was smart. Half his country occupied from the get go, and half of Europe fighting against him, and he still managed to win against the odds. Germany, the largest and most advanced economy in Europe, couldn't have fared worse if its decisions were made by chimpansees throwing darts.

Stalin had the largest army in Europe. He had far greater quantities of armor, artillery and airplanes than Germany. He had brilliant military minds and a sound doctrine. Despite Western historiography, the Soviet military was second only to the Wehrmacht in quality, even in 1941. Due to his intelligent decisions, his brilliant officer corps was systematically murdered by their own leader directly before the war and the vast majority of this force was destroyed by the Germans in the first year of the war, having to be rebuilt from scratch. Stalin's best decision was when he decided to stop making decisions and leave it to the professionals.

This all seems to be based more in narrative than history, Louis. Obviously the Nazis made poor decisions that lost the war, but writing them off as little more than chimps is perilously simple. Hitler in his prime was a personally courageous and politically brilliant leader that managed to bring a fringe ideology to power in Germany through the sheer force of his personality and then went on to almost conquer Europe. That is why he was so dangerous.