The F-T process attracted attention as a means of Nazi Germany to produce liquid hydrocarbons. The original process was developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, working at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Chemistry in 1926. They filed a number of patents, e.g., , applied 1926, published 1930. It was commercialized by Brabag in Germany in 1936. Being petroleum-poor but coal-rich, Germany used the process during World War II to produce ersatz (replacement) fuels. FT production accounted for an estimated 9% of German war production of fuels and 25% of the automobile fuel. Many refinements and adjustments have been made to the process since Fischer and Tropsch's time.
The United States Bureau of Mines, in a program initiated by the Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act, employed seven Operation Paperclip synthetic fuel scientists in a Fischer–Tropsch plant in Louisiana, Missouri in 1946.
In Britain, Alfred August Aicher obtained several patents for improvements to the process in the 1930s and 1940s. Aichers company was named Synthetic Oils Ltd' (not related to a company of the same name in Canada).
Around the 1930s and 1940s, Arthur Imhausen developed and implemented an industrial process for producing edible fats from these synthetic oils through oxidation.  The products were fractionally distilled and the edible fats were obtained from the - fraction which were reacted with glycerol such as that synthesized from propylene. "Coal butter" margarine made from synthetic oils was found to be nutritious and of agreeable taste, and it was incorporated into diets contributing as much as 700 calories per day. The process required at least 60 kg of coal per kg of synthetic butter.