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It took a long time for aluminum to be considered a strategic material for the armament industry. This turn occurred during World War I. Military orders became a stake for industrialists and a stimulus for innovation. In the long run, this turn created some of the foundations for the growth of the civilian market for aluminum. Gradually, a type of paradoxical regulation of the industry emerged worldwide. On one side, governments and parliaments accepted a cartelization of markets and tariff bareers. On the other side, in the US, governments, when confronted with the enormous needs of the armies during World War II, questioned the monopoly of Alcoa. Business cycles and military cycles thus became more and more independent. Such an analysis is carried up to the breakout of the Vietnam War. It stresses the complex links between military orders and aluminum industrialists which included a stockpile after World War II.