And they called themselves the Master Race.

Alexis Madrigal at Wired is assembling a book on the history of greentech (see our own version of archaic green technologies here) and he's come across this courtesy of Bruce Sterling: a railroad car powered by a sail from the Third Reich.

"The Nazis were desperately short on fuel throughout the 20th century. They didn’t have any in Germany and the two biggest suppliers at that point were the Russians and Americans. As a result, the Nazis engaged in the most important program to turn coal into fuel for vehicles that the world has ever known. Given the paucity of oil available to the Nazis, it makes sense that they would have tried to harness other forms of energy," Madrigal writes.

True, oil was one of Hitler's big strategic objectives. The Fischer-Tropsch system for turning coal into oil (also known as the Hans and Franz process after Hans Fischer and Franz Tropsch) was invented in the 1920s but went big time during World War II. South Africa picked it up after the oil embargoes imposed during Apartheid.

It is unfortunate the sail car never got into production. The budget for picnic lunches and Hugo Boss-made uniforms for outings on the Ruhr line would have bankrupted the country early and forced Hitler to sue for peace.