How Minerals Made Civilization, the UA Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources’ YouTube video series on the role of mineral resources in history, is launching a trilogy about how mineral resources influenced the war. Part 1, posted today, covers mineral resources during the interwar buildup: how mineral resources figured in national (and transnational) politics in the 1930s, how resource-poor nations sought to build up their supplies, and how the struggle for resources eventually culminated in the outbreak of the war. From the video, here are a few fun facts you may not have known:
• Coins for combat: During the early to mid-1930s, both Germany and Japan reissued old silver coinages in nickel so they would have a nickel supply for gun steels when the war broke out.
• Coal, meet hydrogen: Coal-to-oil conversion was invented too late to change the outcome of World War 1, but it was about to play a major role in supplying Germany in the next war.
• Why we use molybdenum in steels: The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 redirected Soviet manganese exports from the USA to Germany, so American metallurgists developed improved molybdenum-alloy steels as a substitute using molybdenum from Arizona and Colorado.
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