Since 1933, and even more so during this war, here in Germany we differentiate between domestic materials and thrift materials. The domestic metals include, first of all, iron and steel in all their forms, followed by the light metals aluminum and magnesium as well as the highly valued, most important heavy metal, zinc. … In this German team of metals, aluminum and magnesium are the weighty forwards and halfbacks who decide the number of victorious goals.

Because of the experience of World War I, a main focus of National Socialist economic and technology policy was the erection of a blockadeproof “armed state.” Since the availability of raw materials was especially poor with regard to the metals important for armaments, considerable efforts were made to extract metallic substitutes from domestic natural resources. Of the nonferrous metals, the application of zinc, aluminum, and magnesium was pushed in order to replace such metals as copper, bronze, and brass in armaments production. Beyond calculations about materials strategy, National Socialist technology ideologues stylized the philosophy of substitute materials as an element of their “techno-policy.” Moreover, in this process the research of German metals scientists served as proof of the superiority of “German technology.”

The alloys connoted by the disagreeable term “substitute material” (Ersatzstoff) were assigned the ideologically correct term “domestic material” (Heimstoff) which could be extracted from the “soil of the home country” (Heimatboden) or the “native clod” (heimische Scholle).