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polymer that was critical to the war effort was "synthetic rubber", which was produced in a variety of forms. Synthetic rubbers are not plastics. Synthetic rubbers are elastic materials.

The first synthetic rubber polymer was obtained by Lebedev in 1910. Practical synthetic rubber grew out of studies published in 1930 written independently by American Wallace Carothers, Russian scientist Lebedev and the German scientist Hermann Staudinger. These studies led in 1931 to one of the first successful synthetic rubbers, known as "neoprene", which was developed at DuPont under the direction of E.K. Bolton. Neoprene is highly resistant to heat and chemicals such as oil and gasoline, and is used in fuel hoses and as an insulating material in machinery.

In 1935, German chemists synthesized the first of a series of synthetic rubbers known as "Buna rubbers". These were "copolymers", meaning that their polymers were made up from not one but two monomers, in alternating sequence. One such Buna rubber, known as "GR-S" (Government Rubber Styrene), is a copolymer of butadiene and styrene, became the basis for U.S. synthetic rubber production during World War II.

Worldwide natural rubber supplies were limited and by mid-1942 most of the rubber-producing regions were under Japanese control. Military trucks needed rubber for tires, and rubber was used in almost every other war machine. The U.S. government launched a major (and largely secret) effort to develop and refine synthetic rubber. A principal scientist involved with the effort was Edward Robbins.

By 1944 a total of 50 factories were manufacturing it, pouring out a volume of the material twice that of the world's natural rubber production before the beginning of the war.

After the war, natural rubber plantations no longer had a stranglehold on rubber supplies, particularly after chemists learned to synthesize isoprene. GR-S remains the primary synthetic rubber for the manufacture of tires.

Synthetic rubber would also play an important part in the space race and nuclear arms race. Solid rockets used during World War II used nitrocellulose explosives for propellants, but it was impractical and dangerous to make such rockets very big.