Something I've seen from time to time is the remark that once the Russians moved their factories eastward they were beyond the range of Luftwaffe bombers. I've also seen a lack of heavy bombers being considered as a weak point for Germany.
So what I was wondering is, if the Luftwaffe had an effective force of heavy bombers with enough range would it have made any difference whatsoever? I thinking specifically of Russia targets but also in the West.
(I am defining Heavy bomber as something in the Lancaster/B17 size bracket.)
So I'm not going to address the hypothetical directly, just provide some relevant facts.
Firstly, the strategic plan for the German offensives in the east was to force the Soviets to surrender by destroying large portions of the Red Army and set the conditions for political collapse of the Soviet state. This is basically the plan that forced France out of the war in 1940, but applied to the Soviet union. This is a distinctly different strategy from an attrition campaign. They wanted to knock out the Soviets with a few punches to the army over a summer or two rather than beat them in a long war targeting the army and cities. The Luftwaffe's single and twin engine combat aircraft obviously fit with the overall Nazi strategy of defeating the Red Army on the battlefield. A four engine bomber really doesn't fit with this strategy and having the Luftwaffe and Army pursuing opposite strategies is unlikely to be helpful. If the Germans had had a strategic air arm with a heavy bomber, how else would their strategic aims have changed in 1940 and 1941?
Secondly, four engine bombers are expensive. They consume much more resources than smaller aircraft. German resources were very constrained by the two front war already. Additionally, eastern front logistics hampered the Luftwaffe as it was. Four engine bombers would have required good airfields with good logistic connections which were simply not available to the German Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union.
Using much greater resources, the western allies were unable to cripple German production with the bomber offensive until at least 1944, if indeed they did then. If the combined industrial production of Britain and the U.S. wasn't enough, how could a vastly poorer German industry manage a crippling bomber offensive? Would Germany have needed other technological assets like an effective long range fighter, as the allies did to get their own results?
You can see where I'm going with this. A hypothetical long-range Nazi bomber just isn't very relevant to the actual history of WWII, too many underlying conditions would have to be different for it to be a valid choice.