Between 1933 and 1944, Degussa expended approximately 18 million Reichsmarks, a sum equal to about half of the firm's total capitalization at the outset of the Third Reich, on the acquisition of formerly Jewish-owned property – that is, on what the Nazi regime dubbed “Aryanization.” Fully or jointly owned subsidiaries spent at least another 645,000 RM to the same end. Among the objects obtained were no fewer than ten firms, seven of them in Germany and three in the so-called Protectorate, one of which was bought by a corporation Degussa had Aryanized earlier. In addition, the concern augmented its holdings in three other enterprises by buying up four substantial stock packets from emigrating families; took over ten pieces of real estate in Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, and Prague (two of these also were serial Aryanizations, i.e., takeovers by earlier targets of the same procedure); and capped the process of expansion at Jews' expense with the purchase of a confiscated patent in August 1944.

Although it is extremely difficult to specify how much these purchases improved Degussa's balance sheets and profitability both during the Nazi period and later, there can be no doubt that Aryanization contributed appreciably to the corporation's short- and long-term success. All but two of the enterprises taken over returned substantial profits during the 1930s and 1940s; most of them remained in Degussa's possession through the 1950s, and three of them, along with at least one of the stock packets, still did at the end of the twentieth century.