Paul Brauner escaped from Berlin days before the clouds of War descended. His family perished in the Holocaust. He re-entered the city in 1945 as a captain in a British infantry regiment and found himself enmeshed in its geo-political turmoil. He matured to make a career in metals and took on the giants of the business to beat them at their own game. The two giant aluminum smelters he built in Bahrain and Dubai were at the end of the 20th century still the only major non-oil industries in the Gulf.