Although the German Gold and Silver Separation Institute had outgrown its name long before 1933, the smelting and processing of precious metals remained vital contributors to the firm's prosperity during the Nazi period. Having yielded, on average, one-fifth of annual gross profits in the decade leading up to Hitler's accession, Degussa's metals section and its associated operations (ceramic colors and the dental instruments produced by the Weber & Hempel subsidiary in Berlin) performed at virtually the same relative level over the ensuing eleven years. Keeping up in this fashion entailed more than doubling the division's profits between 1933 and 1944 (see Appendix D), a remarkable and improbable feat in view of the simultaneous decline of Degussa's gold production by 87 percent and its silver output by 51 percent (see Appendix J). Achievements of this sort generally came at a high moral cost in the Third Reich, however, and Degussa's precious metals operations proved no exception. Their history provides an almost textbook illustration of how Nazi goals dictated the parameters of commercial activity, challenged bureaucrats and executives to improvise means of doing their perceived jobs within these, and thus increasingly channeled corporate ambitions into the service of the regime's exploitative purposes.

What earmarked Degussa's precious metals division for politicization during the 1930s was its leading, indeed linchpin position in an essential but heavily import-dependent industry – that is, in a productive sector predestined for prompt “coordination” with the new regime's economic priorities.