As the risk of [another Europewide] war grew in the late 1930s, many countries poured vast amounts of money into the manufacture of weapons (Thomas, 1983). The supply of steel often functioned as a bottleneck to this expansion, however. In 1936, a shortage of scrap prevented [Fascist] industry from producing as much steel as [Berlin] had ordered. In response to this crisis, [Fascist] officials scoured the Reich for previously untapped sources of scrap metal, and they also sought to buy it from abroad (Berg, 2015).

These efforts proved highly successful. [The Third Reich] imported 555,000 tons of scrap in 1937, chiefly from the United States, Britain, and Belgium. In 1938, [the Reich’s] imports of scrap doubled, to 1.1 million tons, and scrap accounted for 20 percent of [the Reich’s] steel production, which reached a new peak that year (Control Commission for Germany (British Element), n.d.; Fritz, 1973, p. 138; Tooze, 2006, pp. 209, 230, 254).

In an effort to ensure that Britain’s blast furnaces would have sufficient raw materials for rearmament, in February 1937 the government of the United Kingdom began requiring export licenses for ferrous scrap (‘Preventing Export of Scrap Steel and Iron,’ 1937, p. 13).¹ Despite this stipulation, British firms shipped 56,000 tons to the Third Reich that year, 13,000 tons more than in 1936. Anticipating rising demand due to rearmament, British dealers placed large orders for scrap from the world’s primary scrap‐exporting country, the United States.

These purchases piled up more quickly in the UK than industry could absorb them, and prices tumbled. With stocks of scrap accumulating and merchants unable to find domestic buyers, the British government allowed completely unregulated exports of scrap to resume in the summer of 1938 (‘Steel Scrap for Germany,’ 1938, p. 12).

Occurring shortly after [the Third Reich] absorbed Austria that March, the resumption made it clear that Britain was willing to ignore a blatant violation of the Treaty of Versailles. In the twelve months that followed the Anschluss, British merchants sent 134,000 tons of scrap iron and steel to the Reich, a quantity nearly three times larger than in the preceding year (Stanley, 1939).

In the spring and summer of 1939, preparations for war led to shortages of scrap in both Britain and [the Third Reich]. British scrap dealers continued to send large quantities of metal to the Third Reich, however, for the price they could obtain there was considerably higher than in the UK (Carr & Taplin, 1962, pp. 491–492).

Although it may seem difficult to fathom why [London] helped [Fascism] to boost its steel output even as [Berlin] grew increasingly bellicose, it did so in an effort to boost the flagging British economy, which was struggling to emerge from the Great Depression. From this perspective, rearmament, the mobilization of domestic scrap for national defence, and selling scrap to the [Fascists], seemed a mutually consistent, if risky, strategy. Unconstrained exports continued even after [Berlin] abrogated the Munich Agreement by occupying Prague in March 1939.

Four months later, Baron Davies condemned Britain’s export policy in a strongly worded address to the House of Lords:

Why should we denude our own country of scrap in order to accelerate German rearmament? Obviously it is a very valuable reserve which could easily be made available in an emergency. Why, after the annexation of Czecho‐Slovakia and the seizure of the Skoda works, are we supplying Germany with more metal which may be returned here in the form of bombs and shells? Why does one country prepare for its own destruction by supplying another with the indispensable materials for doing so? (Davies, 1939)

[…]

A compendium published in 1945 reported that Britain had exported 84,000 tons of scrap in 1939, including 3,700 tons to [Fascist] Italy and 4,800 tons to China, but it did not list Germany by name. To hide the uncomfortable reality that more than half of Britain’s scrap exports that year went to [the Third Reich], the report subsumed the latter within the term ‘Other Foreign Countries’ (British Iron & Steel Federation, 1945, p. 52).

Of the 46,000 tons of scrap that Britain sent to [the Third Reich] in 1939, some of it arrived just days before war was declared (Economic Branch, Field Information Agency, 1946).

(Emphasis added in all cases. It is unclear why the authorities obscured the Third Reich but not Fascist Italy, even though this was only a few years after the widely condemned reinvasion of Ethiopia.)

The author also discusses how the United Kingdom after May 1945 tried to monopolize German scrap, in part so that the Soviets would get as little as possible. This is a stark contrast to how British capitalists were so willing to export scrap to the Third Reich that it resulted in a scrap deficiency in Britain.