Article discussing Turkish chromium exports to Germany during WW2

[Peter89]

Any reliable numbers at hand to show Turkish exports to Germany vs the quantities extracted from the Balkan mines, or other sources?

Never mind, I see them hid behind the numbers for Wolfram.

Yep.

Check out the The World War Two Allied Economic Warfare: The Case of Turkish Chrome Sales by Murat Önsoy, downloadable from here: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mu ... -Sales.pdf

Page 78 contains infos for prewar German imports and page 81 contains infos for wartime German imports, stocks and consumption.
Page 82 contains superficial infos about the Albanian chrome, which was of good quality and in ever-increasing production.

The most important sources are, in my opinion:
Die rohstoffwirtschaftliche Bedeutung des Südostraumes für die deutsche Wehrwirtschaft (The importance of the Southwestern Region's raw materials for the German armament industry)
Die Wirtshcaftliche Abhängigkeit des Dritten Reiches Vom Ausland (The external economic dependency of the Third Reich) by Jörg-Johannes Jäger.
Die Monatsberichten (monthly reports) from Albania and other respective countries. historygeek's argument, that the quality of the Turkish chrome was decisive and irreplaceable by the ore from the Balkans, is apparently false. First of all, the low quality ores could be refined, although at a greater cost. Second, the Albanian ore was of high quality and in sufficient quantity. A rather good summary of the economic exploitation in Albania can be read here: http://www.albanianhistory.net/1945_Ger ... index.html, with monthly breakdown and a little background story for the chrome mining in Albania.

To take a sidenote, to process the Swedish iron ore into Thomas pig iron was something like twice as cheap as iron ores from other sources.

The German Steel Industry
Coordinating Organization’s analysis in 1935/1936 gave the cost of producing
one ton of Thomas pig‐iron using Swedish imported iron ore as approximately 42
Reichsmarks plus taxes of approximately 4 Reichsmarks, whereas producing one
ton of pig‐iron in the Ruhr using domestic iron ore was estimated to cost over
twice as much, 97 Reichsmarks. Winkhaus, who conducted this study, further
indicates that prices did not change through 1939 and Swedish ore remained
roughly half as expensive as German ore