By the end of the 1930s, a Canadian business supplied almost the entire nickel market for the Third Reich

Through its vertical integration and aggressive expansion strategy, [the Canadian‐based International Nickel Company] supplied the German market in the 1930s, as evidenced by various agreements with [Fascist] manufacturers. The company wanted to protect the newly developed German market and feared government intervention. INCO drew an important lesson from the experience of the First World War: to prevent government control by influencing both politicians and public opinion.

To protect its business interests in [the German Reich], INCO leveraged its information advantage and sought to influence public opinion by downplaying the rôle of Canadian nickel in [the Third Reich’s] armaments industry.

[…]

In the late 1920s, the nickel market became even more concentrated. INCO became a Canadian‐based company (before U.S.) and incorporated its main competitor, the British Mond Nickel Company, a result of the company’s aggressive expansion strategy. INCO emerged as a virtual global monopoly.⁴² In the years following the [Fascist] takeover in 1933, political tensions with [the German Reich] increased. The question of a nickel embargo resurfaced, as evidenced by various newspaper articles and discussions in the British and Canadian parliaments.⁴³

Robert Stanley claimed at the annual meeting of INCO in 1938 that ‘Canadian nickel is neither essential for war, nor is it essentially a war material’.⁴⁴ Moreover, Stanley stated that the amount of nickel used for war purposes was less than ten percent of the world’s output.⁴⁵ This statement was untrue and was made primarily to avoid public pressure that could lead to an embargo and to secure business interests in the [Fascist] market.

Based on INCO’s 1934 figures, F. E. Lathe and S. J. Cook of the Canadian National Research Council estimated in 1935 that eighteen percent of nickel production was used for war materials.⁴⁶ In the same year, Robert Stanley prepared an essay estimating the proportion to be only ten percent (or even less).⁴⁷ He repeated this [mis]information in official interviews.⁴⁸

Not only was Lathe and Cook’s estimate much higher than Robert Stanley’s, but Stanley’s estimate did not change after 1934. In the years after 1934, the increase in nickel demand was no longer driven by the U.S. automobile industry. Rather, global demand rose due to the increasing nickel import of European countries, the USSR and [the Empire of] Japan. Between 1933 and 1938, Britain and [the Empire of] Japan more than tripled and [the Third Reich] doubled their nickel consumption.⁴⁹

The U.S. maintained its status as the largest importer in the world nickel market. [the Soviet Union] emerged as the second largest importer, followed by the United Kingdom, which narrowly surpassed [the German Reich’s] imports in the fourth position, [the Empire of] Japan secured the fifth place.⁵⁰ In contrast to U.S. nickel consumption, the growth in European and Japanese consumption was largely driven by the armament industry.⁵¹

This shift towards armament was especially true in Germany. By 1934, [Berlin] had already begun to restrict the civilian use of nickel. In the first half of 1939, the Wehrmacht received 47% of [the Third Reich’s] nickel supply for weapons production.⁵² In the midst of these shifts in consumption in the second half of the 1930s, Stanley consistently claimed that war materials accounted for only ten percent of world nickel consumption.

[…]

In April 1934, INCO and IG Farben, the [Fascist] chemical giant, signed a ten‐year contract. As revealed by Scherner and Sandvik, IG Farben developed a high‐pressure technology that could also be utilised for refining nickel. When IG Farben was searching for raw nickel to use this new refining technology, INCO approached the company through Mond Nickel and offered deliveries of intermediate nickel (matte). In return, INCO received a license to IG Farben’s refining process as part of the supply agreement.

Although the nickel matte was sourced from Canada, the contract required IG Farben to make payments in pounds sterling to the British‐based Mond Nickel.⁵⁸ This contract made IG Farben the new leading nickel refiner in [the Third Reich] in just two years. With supplies from INCO, IG Farben’s nickel production increased from 411 tons in 1934 to 4,003 tons in 1938, accounting for one‐third of [the Third Reich’s] total annual nickel consumption.

By the end of the 1930s, INCO supplied almost the entire German nickel market (see Figure 1). The German market was of paramount importance to INCO, accounting for approximately 9% of the company’s total deliveries between 1934 and 1938, just slightly behind the United Kingdom, which accounted for around 11% of INCO’s deliveries.⁵⁹

Of the major [Fascist] nickel refineries, only Krupp (and its affiliate Norddeutsche Hütte AG) and the Sächsische Blaufarbenwerke remained as companies not under contract to INCO. Krupp obtained most of its nickel ore from its own mine at Frankenstein, while the Blaufarbenwerke relied on deliveries from the Burma Corporation. When IG Farben sought to increase its stocks in 1938, presumably to comply with [Berlin’s] stockpiling plan, INCO increased the contractual maximum stock and even agreed to assume the stockpiling risk and cover the costs.⁶⁰

However, INCO disapproved of the 1934 German restrictions on the use of nickel. This disapproval indicates that INCO primarily aimed to sell its product on a large scale and not to meet the demands of [Berlin’s] war preparations. Nevertheless, the [Fascist] authorities were pleased with INCO’s endeavours in [the Third Reich]. By supplying upstream nickel products, INCO served as an important pillar of [Fascist] resource policy, enabling the country to save foreign exchange and build up stocks.

Unsurprisingly, the [Fascist] authorities for metals control (‘Überwachungsstelle für unedle Metalle’) explicitly supported INCO’s agreements with [Fascist] nickel refiners.⁶¹ Moreover, the Administration Office of the Reich’s Ministry of Economics (‘Bewirtschaftungsstelle des Reichswirtschaftsministeriums’) granted approval for the foreign exchange, which allowed a considerable saving in foreign exchange, as only about half the price of nickel metal had to be paid.⁶²

(Emphasis added.)

This is another document where it was hard for me to assemble an excerpt, because it has so much damning material on both the Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom that I had to select my fragments carefully. The evidence is also quite damning of ‘free trade’ philosophy.

:::spoiler Click here for events that happened today (October 14). 1888: Yukio Sakurauchi, Imperial Minister of Commerce and Industry, was born.
1909: Mochitsura Hashimoto, Axis submarine commander, and Bernd Rosemeyer, Hauptsturmführer, were both delivered to the world.
1930: The fascist Lapua Movement kidnapped former and first President of Finland, K. J. Ståhlberg, and his wife, Ester Ståhlberg, from their home.
1933: The Third Reich withdrew from the League of Nations and World Disarmament Conference.
1939: The Axis submarine U‐47 sunk the British battleship HMS Royal Oak within her harbour at Scapa Flow, Scotland, massacring eight hundred thirty‐three folk. Additionally, Chuichi Nagumo’s superiors placed him on a committee studying capital ship bridge design, and Korechika Anami became the deputy commanding officer of the IJA.
1940: The London Blitz destroyed the Balham underground station, massacring sixty‐six people.
1941: The Axis neutralized the Soviet troops in the Bryansk pocket in Russia (50,000 captured), while the Vyazma pocket was within days of the same fate. Berlin also ordered that the Soviet capital of Moscow be enveloped, but not attacked directly. Likewise, the Third Reich announced that all Jews within the 1933 border would be deported; these Jews were beginning to be deported to ghetti in Poland, Byelorussia, and Ukraine. Lastly, the Kriegsmarine placed orders for forty‐nine more submarines to be constructed.
1942: Luftflotte 4 aided the Axis assault on the Stalingrad Tractor Factory, but the Wehrmacht offensive in the Caucasus region of southern Russia ceased with the exception of 17th Army’s attacks near Tuapse on the coast of the Black Sea. Before dawn, six Axis destroyers landed one thousand troops on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands.
1943: Axis troops cleared the Zaporozhe bridgehead, retreating across the Dneiper River in southern Ukraine, while the Second Philippine Republic, an Axis collaborationist régime, inaugurated José P. Laurel as its president. Meanwhile, the Axis took out sixty of the United States Eighth Air Force’s 291 B‐17 Flying Fortresses during the Second Raid on Schweinfurt. Oberleutnant Walter Nowotny, Commanding officer of the I/JG54 group, also became the first pilot in the world to achieve two hundred fifty kills, for which feat he would receive the Greater German Reich’s twoth highest award, Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross medal, awarded to him by his Chancellor. Lastly, Sobibór succumbed to a Jewish uprising.
1944: Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel, Axis field marshal (who served an important rôle in controlling North Africa), committed suicide with a cyanide capsule given by General Wilhelm Burgdorf. Apart from that, a V‐1 flying bomb landed in a field by the Suffolk village of Hopton and failed to explode, but Bomb Disposal Officer Lieutenant C. H. Bassett died whilst removing one of the fuses.
2002: Norbert Arnold Wilhelm Richard Schultze, Fascist musician, died. :::