Abstract

A disruptive strategic metal: Norway’s aluminum industry meets World War II

This paper argues that the coming of state ownership in Norway after World War II was very dependent on the development of the aluminum industry in Norway and internationally. Contrary to prior Norwegian research on the Norwegian aluminum industry arguing for the significance of the German occupational regime building a physical foundation for a new aluminum industry in Norway that after the war called for the Norwegian state to fill a vacuum and be the owner, this paper underlines the longer term importance of a concerted Norwegian effort within aluminum prior to the war that created both a platform for the German war effort and after the war discredited some of the main actors – a Scandinavian business elite – from taking part in the post war reconstruction. They would have been an obvious core owner group within aluminum as well as with Norsk Hydro, the company where they were very active prior to the war and where the Norwegian state also took control after the war by seizing the German shareholdership. The fate of this powerful Scandinavian group of industrialists was very much impacted by the American war effort. The kind of collaboration they had commenced may have been acceptable from a purely Norwegian point of view, but the American take on Norwegian deliveries during the war to Germany of important products led the Americans to have a very harsh view on any kind of collaboration. This attitude was enhanced by the strong realization in America that aluminum was a strategic metal that needed to be handled with the utmost care.