this proposal had been forthcoming six months earlier, there can be little doubt that it would have settled the argument. By the summer of 1937, however, it was too late.108 After months of obstinate resistance from Poensgen and his colleagues, Pleiger was determined not simply to expand German iron ore mining, but to break the heavy industrial power bloc of the Ruhr. His goal was to establish an independent, state-controlled, vertically integrated steel conglomerate in central Germany large enough to challenge even the Vereinigte Stahlwerke.
