The limited supplies of crude oil and the constantly increasing demand for petroleum products led to efforts, particularly in Germany, to produce fuels synthetically, using the abundant coal reserves as a raw material source. It is gratifying to note in retrospect that this problem was solved in a technically sound manner almost simultaneously through two fundamentally different approaches. The first method, based on the favorable effects of using high pressures in the hydrogenation of coal identified by F. Bergius, resulted in the production of liquid and solid hydrocarbons through catalytic pressure hydrogenation of coal by M. Pier and other colleagues at I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. In this pressure hydrogenation process, the hydrocarbons are produced by the incorporation of hydrogen and cleavage.