Read the book. It is more interesting

I remember reading the book back in college. I don't know what made me purchase it. I think it was the premise, about a highly secret formula that could cheaply manufacture synthetic petroleum out of coal, which attracted me.

The concept is not new. The Germans were forced to manufacture synthetic oil out of coal during World War II even though it was expensive to do so. It was war and so economies of manufacture and capitalism did not factor in. The Germans were cut off from natural petroleum supplies, which the Allies monopolized. But Germany and its allies had access to large coal supplies. The reason coal is not used today is because the conversion process involved creates a barrel of oil that costs more than a barrel of oil piped out of the ground. There's talk about processing American shale oil rock from Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming into liquid oil but the same costs remain, including the need to use large amounts of water in the process, which those states cannot spare.

The book has a fascinating first chapter that is not covered in the movie. The movie's opening scene of a German convoy stopped and captured near the Swiss Alps by Americans does not follow the first chapter accurately. The movie's director or producer thought the book's first chapter was incidental to the movie and so skipped what could have been a better movie introduction.

I'll go ahead and tell you what you missed. In the book, the scene starts in the twilight of Nazi Germany, I would say, in the month of March. A German Army colonel is summoned to Berlin where he meets a SS general in his sumptuous quarters upstairs in a posh hotel. The SS general exits his room, finishing buttoning up his impressive SS uniform, the sound of a very young woman's voice behind him. The SS general tells the Army colonel to take charge of a special convoy of top secret cargo to the German-Swiss border. The general only describes the cargo as being items of potential great value to the Allies should any post-war bargaining leverage be necessary. The colonel is fully aware the war is lost but takes on the assignment. After the colonel departs the suite of rooms, the SS general re-enters his grand bedroom and begins undressing. His attention is diverted to his bed companion, a young woman of barely legal age who interrupts the general's undressing with a teenage girl's question about whether he knows the French movie actor, Maurice Chevalier, who was famous in French films just before the war. The convoy starts out and after 12 hours of travel they stop for one break so the men can rest and eat their rations of cheese and crackers. The colonel opts to drink wine for his reststop meal. The convoy gets going again and heads up into the snowy mountain road but doesn't get far before running into a powerful American Army roadblock. It's over. The German colonel dismounts along with the soldiers in the convoy to surrender to the approaching American troops. The colonel is accosted by the American commander, a major, who is more gruff and brusque than the polite, generous one depicted in the movie. The American major (in the book) sharply demands to examine the convoy's manifest from the German colonel. The German colonel privately conceals his disdain and disgust at the low social skills and backgrounds of the Americans, even their officers. Inwardly surrendering to the inevitable, the colonel quickly pulls out a hidden grenade from inside his overcoat, pulls the pin and grips the surprised American major in an embrace with the activated grenade between them. The grenade explodes, killing both men, and the book's first chapter ends. The second chapter begins the story in modern times.

In the movie, the German is a general and is played by the late, American character actor, Richard Lynch, who fully looked the part of a Nazi in the movie. Richard Lynch had actually served a four-year enlistment in the U.S. Marines. Later in life he burned his face and neck playing around with drugs. The resulting scars helped enhance his 'sinister look', which Lynch fully took advantage of in playing sinister and diabolitical Hollywood villains. One of Richard Lynch's best villain roles was that of a rogue KGB agent, Rostov, leading a massive terrorist invasion of the U.S. through southern Florida in the 1985 cult classic, 'Invasion USA'. His other fave villain is that of renegade range guide, Ankar Moor, from the Roger Corman 1978 cult favorite, 'Deathsport'.