Why Did Germany Help China During World War II? – Tungsten

Why did the Germany help China during World War II, which involved an important metal – tungsten. Looking back on history, in the early days of the world war, some German troops owned more sophisticated equipment than the Japanese, such as Mauser rifles, Czech machine guns, heavy mark machine guns, and 37mm tank-destroyer gun. These troops with advanced weapons are commonly known as "German".

Germany was actively expanding its arms and preparing for war, was in urgent need of importing a batch of tungsten ore as important strategic resource. Their high-speed steel is required of tungsten, making it to be a very important raw material for military industry.

On July 20, 1934, Germany signed a secret barter agreement with Nanjing government: the exchange of German “industrial products” with Chinese raw materials, totaling 200 million marks. Germany have signed an agreement with Nanjing government to provide an annual output of 3.6 million RMB worth of tungsten sand, about 3,600 tons. 

The government attached great importance to the tungsten trade. In the spring of 1932, the "Chinese Soviet Tungsten Sands Company" was established in the base area, and the younger brother of Mao Commissioner served as the general manager. On the eve of the strategic shift in October 1934, this company jointly extracted and purchased 4,193 tons of tungsten sand, the number of employees in the public tungsten mine reached 5,000 people. In just two years, the tungsten sand trade has created a total of 6.2 million silver dollars.

The history of tungsten could date back to the 17th century. At the time, miners in the Erzgebirge Mountains of Saxony Germany, noticed that some of the ore would interfere with the reduction of cassiterite and produce slag. The miners gave the mines some German nicknames: "wolfert" and "wolfrahm".

In 1781, the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Schel discovered the scheelite and extracted tungstic acid from it. He believed that a new metal may be obtained by reducing tungstic acid. In 1783, Husse de Luyal and the Faustul de Luyal brothers also extracted tungstic acid from the wolframite. In the same year, they obtained tungsten powder for the first time with carbon reduction of tungsten trioxide.

The use of tungsten in the military field has played a role in changing the situation. As stated at the beginning of this article, what does Germans do to import a large amount of tungsten from China?

Germany's famous attack aircraft "HS-129" was hailed as the earliest "A-10" attack aircraft, but its 30mm anti-tank gun did not show outstanding performance at first, because the steel warhead used is not good enough, when facing T-34 armor, there is nothing to do with it.

While, the Germany 30mm anti-tank gun with a tungsten core warhead turned the HS-129 into an "air can opener", it became a nightmare for the T-34 tank. It is blunt to say that without such a tungsten warhead to help the Germany repel the counterattack of the Soviet armored forces, in 1942 the Soviet armored forces could drive to Berlin city.

Chinese tungsten helped Germany strengthen its weapons during the World War II, this was also the reason why Germany helped China in that period. It can also be said that the use of tungsten has changed the course of World War II.

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