A Difficult New Beginning. The Race of the German Aluminium Industry to Catch up with the Competition in the 1950s and 1960s

摘要

In this article, which is an extract from a book on the history of the German aluminium industry due to appear in 2014 by De Gruyter Verlag the author describes the spectacular ascent of this industry in the Federal Republic of Germany in the years of the postwar "Wirtschaftswunder'' After the collapse of Nazi Germany, the Allied powers subjected the sector to sweeping restrictions, banning the production of primary aluminium and restricting its use to 30 000 tons per year for Germany as a whole. Only after the gradual lifting of these restrictions and their abolition at the end of the 1940s was the industry able to return to normal conditions. Major efforts and massive investments were necessary to catch up with the international competition, which had been able to modernise and expand their plants right after the end of the war. Benefitting from the favorable economic conditions during the "Golden Years", the German aluminium industry staged an impressive comeback, outperforming most of their European competitors. At the end of the 1960s Germany was again among the leading aluminium nations of the Western world.