We earlier, as recorded by the WV Coal Association on August 10 of this year, documented, through report of "US 1,949,891 - Valuable Products from Coal" that the Netherlands, not a nation, aside from some holdings in their then far-flung empire, rich in Coal deposits, had, some years before the outbreak of WWII, like Germany, developed technology wherein liquid hydrocarbon fuels could be synthesized from Coal.
Herein, we see that another Coal-poor European nation, before WWII, saw, as well, that there was benefit in escaping the chains of what was, even then, perhaps especially then, Big Oil, and developed a US Patent Office-approved method for converting Coal into more versatile hydrocarbons.