Battleship Bismarck: A Design and Operational History

PROLOGUE

The launching of the German battleship Bismarck on 14 February 1939 was a state occasion. On the previous day, Adolf Hitler traveled to Friedrichsruh to lay a wreath at the gravesite of Prince Otto von Bismarck. After spending the night at the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg, Hitler and his entourage boarded the yacht Hamburg for a journey across the Elbe River to the Blohm and Voss Shipyard. The armored ship Admiral Scheer fired a twenty-one-gun salute as the yacht made its way across the river. Almost 26,000 people crowded around the launching ways to see Germany’s newest battleship. ¹

All the principal members of the German government were gathered at Blohm and Voss, including Field Marshal Hermann Göring, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, propaganda minister Dr. Josef Goebbels, Admiral of the Fleet Hermann Boehm, and Grand Admiral Erich Raeder. As Adolf Hitler made his way to the launching podium at the bow of the new battleship, the dignitaries rose. Most greeted him with the Nazi salute, although Admiral Raeder and Admiral Boehm gave him the traditional military salute. Admiral Raeder introduced Hitler and thanked him for naming the ship after one of Germany’s greatest leaders.

The day was bright and sunny, but a cold breeze fluttered the flags of the Third Reich around the launching site. The Bismarck family crest adorned the bow structure of the new battleship. Workmen stood by two folded white placards that were resting against the bow railing, waiting for the crew to release the forward and aft launching cradles that would allow the giant battleship to slide into the Elbe along tracks that had been greased earlier that morning to ensure unimpeded movement.

On the platform, Hitler joined other dignitaries including Dorothea von Loewenfeld (Prince Otto von Bismarck’s granddaughter and the ship’s sponsor) and the owners of Blohm and Voss. The shipyard’s president and chairman of the board were dressed in formal attire with silk top hats to emphasize the importance of the event. Hitler moved forward on the platform and in an uncharacteristically brief address of fifteen minutes told the audience that the crew of this new battleship would be imbued with the iron spirit of Germany’s greatest chancellor. Hitler’s remarks were typically pugnacious:

On the day of our assumption of power six years ago commenced the resurrection of the German Wehrmacht. It is to secure the existence of the Reich and to enable its Fuhrer to pursue the justified interests of the nation successfully. As the sharpest instrument of war, it is to take under its protection a just peace and help shield it. Simultaneously with the establishment of the German Army and the creation of a new German Luftwaffe, we established a new Navy, one sufficient to meet our needs. We Germans still feel a terrific tug at our hearts when we think of the fate of the Fleet sunk twenty years ago, after its glorious struggle throughout four years….

German designers, engineers, and shipyard workers have created the mighty hull of this proud giant which will ride the waves! May the German sailors and officers who have the honor of utilizing this ship always prove to be worthy of its namesake! May the spirit of the Iron Chancellor be transmitted to them, may it accompany them in all their actions on their fortunate journeys in peace, but if it should ever necessary, may it lead them in the hardest hour of their fulfillment of their duty!²

The launch of Bismarck on Slipway 9 at the Blohm and Voss Shipyard in Hamburg on 14 February 1939. Having been christened by Frau Dorothea von Loewenfeld, the granddaughter of Prince Otto von Bismarck, with Adolf Hitler standing at her side, the placards bearing Bismarck’s name were lowered over the bow. Note the absence of the Atlantic bow, which would be added during her fitting-out period. A large number of government officials, including the Kreigsmarine’s commander in chief, Admiral Erich Raeder, were in attendance.

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

Hitler concluded, "It is with this fervent wish, the German people welcome their new battleship Bismarck," and Mrs. von Loewenfeld smashed a bottle of champagne against the port side of the bow, saying, "At the order of the Führer, I christen thee, Bismarck." The sound of the bottle breaking signaled workmen on the bow to fold down the name boards of the new ship, Bismarck, and at 1334 the president of Blohm and Voss pulled the launching trigger that caused hydraulic rams at the forward end of the launching cradle to give the ship a slight push in the event of any reluctance to start moving. The ship actually did hang on the launching ways for a few seconds before sliding down the ways, picking up speed as it entered the water for the first time.

The huge crowd, caught up the spirit of the moment, started to chant Sieg Heil. Hitler moved forward and proudly gave the Nazi salute. Then, firmly gripping the sides of the podium, he stared down the launching ways for several minutes to watch his new battleship float safely into the Elbe. From there, two tugboats took the new battleship to a fitting-out basin where she would receive her superstructure, armament, and much of her armor plate over the next eighteen months.

A mixture of jubilation and anxiety surrounded the future of this powerful new giant of the sea. Some, inspired by their first sight of this enormous ship, which would be heavily armed and well protected, were convinced that she could rise to any challenge, even the mighty British battle cruiser, HMS Hood. However, war with Great Britain was not possible—or was it? Bismarck was named for a chancellor of Germany who had always opposed a naval rivalry with England. In fact, Prince Otto von Bismarck probably would have objected to having the ship named after him. Known as the Iron Chancellor, Bismarck was one of the great figures of the nineteenth century, having played a leading role in the unification of Germany in 1870. He then, by adroit diplomacy, fostered a two-decade era of peace in Europe. Bismarck’s removal from power in 1890 by Wilhelm II signaled the beginning of Europe’s decline into chaos and war.

Although Hitler preached a policy of no war with the United Kingdom, his aggressive tactics in Central Europe were causing anxiety among the peoples and governments of France and the United Kingdom. It seemed that each new territory brought under German hegemony was never enough—first Austria, then the Sudetenland, then the rest of Czechoslovakia, and then Memel. There were worries in Germany, too, that Hitler’s ambitions might lead to a war. There were those, overcome by the spirit of the moment, who believed that this giant war machine was capable of unheard-of successes. The German naval authorities, however, realized that a solitary battleship, whatever her impressive characteristics, could not change the balance of naval power.

Several of the foreign naval attaches present at the launching ceremonies probably realized that Bismarck was going to be a powerful ship, but her dimensions indicated that she would substantially exceed the 35,000-ton standard displacement that the German government was officially reporting.³ The massive protection and powerful armament being claimed by the German press almost certainly could be achieved only by a greater displacement than was permitted by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 or the London Naval Treaty of 1936. Royal Navy captain Thomas Troubridge, the British naval attaché in Berlin since 1936, reported to his superiors that Adolf Hitler presided over the ceremony and that every leading personality in the German government and military was present at the christening and launch. He also was impressed at the size of the battleship.

1

THE ORIGINS OF THE BATTLESHIP BISMARCK

For the first forty-two years of the twentieth century, battleships were acknowledged as the primary instruments of sea power. They were, therefore, the strategic naval weapons of choice for all the great naval powers.

Suffering defeat and the loss of its empire at the end of World War I, Germany was obliged to sign the Versailles Treaty, which placed crippling restrictions on its armed forces. Contrary to the terms of the 11 November 1918 armistice, which designated internment at a neutral port, the German fleet was to be interned in Scapa Flow, under control of the Royal Navy. On 21 November, units of the German High Sea Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter arrived at the Firth of Forth to surrender to the allied fleet under Admiral David Beatty. From there, the German ships were taken to Scapa Flow for internment until a peace treaty could be negotiated.

The Versailles Treaty was to have been signed at 1200 on 20 June 1919, but the event was postponed to 23 June while the victorious powers argued over the disposition of the German ships. France and Italy each wanted a quarter of the ships in the anchorage. Great Britain wanted all the ships scrapped or sunk, aware that any redistribution of them would be detrimental to the Royal Navy’s proportional advantage. Although clause XXXI of the armistice forbade Germany to scuttle its ships, Admiral von Reuter settled the issue by ordering the sinking of fifty-two of the seventy-four interned ships on 21 June 1919.

The Kaiserliche marine, second in size to the Royal Navy at the beginning of World War I, was reduced by the onerous treaty terms to six pre-dreadnought battleships and six obsolete cruisers that had been built between 1899 and 1906.¹ Article 190 forbade the new Reichsmarine to construct or acquire any warships other than those intended to replace ships in commission.

French and British naval constructors decided on 10,000 long tons (2,240 pounds)—the light-ship displacement of the six pre-dreadnought battleships of 1902–6 vintage—as a limiting displacement for armored ships. After twenty years of service, these battleships could be replaced by a vessel of the same displacement, which was incapable of supporting battleship-scale armament or protection, and with a gun caliber limited to 280 millimeters (mm).

On 16 April 1919 the National Assembly of the Weimar Republic formally established the Reichsmarine, a development marked by strife and mutiny. By October 1922 the Reichsmarine had come to terms with its reduced status. The battleship would become the prime element when the decision was made to rebuild the fleet. However, doing so in compliance with the Versailles Treaty limitations would be difficult. The Germans interpreted the treaty displacement limitation terms in long tons, as had the French and English.²

The Versailles Treaty dictated some important changes in the Construction Office and shipyards controlled by the Reichsmarine. The long-established Wilhelmshaven Navy Yard and its veteran workforce were deemed essential to the construction needs of a postwar Reichsmarine, but the former navy yard at Kiel was taken over by the private shipyard Deutsche Werke Werft in 1925.³ Private shipyards, such as Blohm and Voss in Hamburg and Deschimag in Bremen, would meet most of the navy’s future needs. The Construction Office, which had produced the designs for German ships before and during World War I, was also affected. Funds were too severely limited for it to continue as it had under Kaiser Wilhelm II; many naval constructors had to be dismissed. These developments would lead to difficulties when naval construction began during the Adolf Hitler regime about a decade later.

War reparations devastated the German merchant marine, which had lost some of the world’s largest passenger ships. The incomplete passenger liner Bismarck, whose construction by Blohm and Voss had been suspended during World War I, was made a war reparation. Upon completion, Bismarck was to be handed over to Great Britain as compensation for the loss of the hospital ship Britannic. The workers at Blohm and Voss showed their disgust at this decision by causing innumerable delays and even painting Bismarck’s stacks in the colors of the Hamburg-American Line before she left Germany under the British flag; she became Majestic, operated by the White Star Line. The passenger ship Vaterland, interned in the port of New York during the war, was assigned to the United States, becoming Leviathan. The liner Imperator would become Berengeria, operated by the Cunard Line, in compensation for the loss of Lusitania.

Admiral Erich Raeder would rise to a position of leadership in the Reichsmarine by 1928. Although convinced of the primacy of the battleship, Raeder understood that as a markedly inferior naval power, the Reichsmarine also would have to rely heavily on the submarine—of which it had none, by terms of the Versailles Treaty. Admiral Raeder believed that the loyalty of the navy and its personnel—the true core of the fighting force—was achieved through discipline and training. During the last months of World War I, some German naval officers and petty officers had become actively involved in political action, contributing to the eventual abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm. Admiral Raeder was convinced that the only proper path for a career naval officer was complete abstinence from politics and absolute loyalty to the state.

From 1920 to 1923 Raeder immersed himself in compiling a study of Kaiserliche marine operations in World War I that became the basis of a two-volume book, Kreuzerkrieg. The concept of cruiser warfare would manifest itself (and be fully supported by Adolf Hitler) when Raeder’s unprepared navy was thrust into war on 3 September 1939.

The Washington Naval Treaty and the Postwar Battleship

Even after World War I ended, the victorious naval powers continued to design and construct new and more powerful battleships and battle cruisers armed with 406- to 460-mm guns. Only Italy and France were unable to compete; the interned German ships they wanted under the Versailles Treaty had been scuttled by their crews, and they lacked the finances to build their own capital ships. The financial burdens associated with naval construction programs were overwhelming, especially following a ruinously expensive and destructive world war. These programs also increased tensions among the leading naval powers.

The United States already had eleven battleships under construction in 1921, along with five battle cruisers of the Lexington class. Faced with the possibility that these new ships could be outclassed by Japanese and British battleships armed with 457-mm guns, the U.S. Navy also began developing a 457-mm/48-caliber gun. In tests at the naval proving grounds at Dahlgren, Virginia, this gun fired a shell farther than any other gun thus far tested. Mounting nine of these guns with the requisite protection and a speed of 25.2 knots, however, would have required a battleship of 80,000 tons. Additional complications for American designers were the restrictions imposed by the Panama Canal and by harbor depths that collectively limited designs to a beam of less than 33.5 meters and a draft of 10.5 meters.

Grand Admiral Erich Raeder

Born on 24 April 1876 near Hamburg, Erich Raeder entered the German navy in April 1894 as a cadet. Three years later, he graduated first in his class from the naval school at Mürwik as a sub-lieutenant. Upon graduation, he was assigned to Sachsen as a signal officer but was transferred to the armored cruiser Deutschland, which had been assigned to the Far East to be part of a cruiser squadron protecting Germany’s concession in Tsingtao, China.

In 1901 Raeder was appointed a watch officer on the battleship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse and later Kaiser Friedrich III. He was appointed to the information section of the German navy as a press officer, where he showed great talent in the handling of reporters and foreign journalists. His next assignment was as the navigator of the kaiser’s yacht, Hohenzollern, where he had the opportunity to meet influential politicians and naval personnel. He showed great promise and rose in rank very quickly. He spent some time in the Far East and a year in Russia, where he learned their language.

In 1912, as commander, he became a staff officer for the scouting forces. In 1913 he became the chief staff officer for Admiral Franz von Hipper, the commander of the scouting force of the High Seas Fleet. During World War I he was aboard the battle cruiser Seydlitz during the battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland as von Hipper’s chief of staff. Due to damage to that battle cruiser, flag personnel, including Raeder, later shifted to the battle cruiser Moltke after a brief respite aboard a destroyer. Shortly before the armistice that ended World War I, he commanded the light cruiser SMS Koln.

After World War I, Raeder was wrongly accused of taking part in the Kapp rebellion. After being vindicated, Raeder had increasingly more important assignments, starting as the chief of the central bureau, inspector of naval education as a rear admiral in 1922, and command of the Naval District of the Baltic as vice admiral from 1922 until 1928. On 1 October 1928, Admiral Raeder was appointed the head of the German navy. He was determined not to allow ships under his command to waste away in harbor as did his predecessors, Admiral Hugo von Pohl and Admiral Reinhard Scheer. His first objective was to establish sound discipline and morale in the German navy and then a spirit of cooperation and understanding with the German army. Once these were firmly established, Raeder had to face the problem of the requirement for new ships to replace badly obsolete ones.

When Admiral Raeder took command, funding for the armored ship Deutschland had been ordered by the German navy on 17 August 1928, but the Reichstag did not approve it until mid-November. Although Admiral Raeder had favored a more heavily armored and slower ship that would be suited for Baltic waters, discussions finally centered on a cruiser-type ship with a heavy main battery, modest armor protection, and high speed. It was now Admiral Raeder’s duty to see the construction of Deutschland through to completion. Her keel was laid on 9 February 1929 at the Deutsche Werke Yard in Kiel.

Raeder campaigned for a second ship but was met with political opposition, and approval was not given for the construction of Admiral Scheer until 1931. By this time the German government’s attitude toward the navy had changed. In 1932 approval was given for the third armored ship. When Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933, Admiral Raeder was able to work more closely with his Nazi government than he had with that of the Weimar Republic.

Admiral Raeder eventually won his battle for political recognition, and soon the Scharnhorst- and Bismarck-class ships would be built. After the launching ceremonies for Tirpitz on 1 April 1939, Adolf Hitler promoted Raeder to grand admiral in an elaborate ceremony aboard Scharnhorst.

When the invasion of Poland was discussed in April 1938, Admiral Raeder opposed it, believing it would risk war with France and the United Kingdom. He never thought that Hitler would go through with the invasion. It is difficult for historians and military personnel to comprehend how this masterful tactician could be so fooled by Hitler’s lies.

The German invasion of Norway was one of Admiral Raeder’s primary contributions to the war effort. During a naval conference with Hitler on 10 October 1939, Admiral Raeder first suggested that Germany and the Soviet Union pressure Norway for German naval bases in Norway, principally at Trondheim. Hitler demurred, but when the Soviet Union attacked Finland, there was concern that the British and French might send forces to aid Finland through Norway. To counter such a move, Admiral Raeder had the Norwegian politician Vidkun Quisling meet Hitler during December 1939 to formulate a plan to overthrow the Norwegian government peacefully or by force.

The successes of the armored ships had convinced Admiral Raeder that a good offense would be the best defense. This was demonstrated when the two battle cruisers were sent to sea in January 1941. When Bismarck became operational in April 1941, the decision to send her to sea would be the most difficult one that Admiral Raeder had to make during the war. Although first planned to be a multi-battleship offensive operation, it eventually became a risky, isolated, and ultimately unsuccessful undertaking that cost him stature in the eyes of Adolf Hitler. Raeder was eventually forced to resign in December 1942.

The Imperial Japanese Navy had started an ambitious 8–8 program, which called for eight battle cruisers and eight battleships to be completed by 1927. Construction of the first two battleships, Nagato and Mutsu, was well under way by the time of the armistice. These ships were well protected, had 406-mm guns, and were capable of 26.5 knots. The Japanese also began the construction of two similar but larger battleships in 1920 and four more in 1921. Designs were being prepared for four additional ships. All were to be ships of thirty knots and armed with 406-mm guns. In late 1921 the Japanese had prepared the design for four super battleships, to be armed with eight 457-mm guns in twin turrets and having a speed of thirty knots. This ambitious naval program threatened the balance of power in the Far East, where the United Kingdom had a number of possessions, as did the United States (including the Hawaiian Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Philippines). In addition, Japan had gained control of many former German possessions in the Pacific. The British could not ignore these developments. The Royal Navy ordered the construction of four large battle cruisers armed with nine 406-mm/45-caliber guns in triple turrets. Heavily protected and capable of more than thirty knots, these ships were to be larger than HMS Hood, currently the largest ship of her type.

Public opinion in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom began to turn against their countries’ contest for naval supremacy, which promised to be disastrously expensive. Battleship competition between the United States and Great Britain was regarded on both sides of the Atlantic as senseless. Foreseeing that the naval race would cause economic instability, the U.S. government proposed a naval disarmament treaty. Early in 1921 Congress passed a joint resolution favoring a conference to achieve such a treaty. The British foreign office indicated a willingness to follow the Americans in this effort; the two countries felt that if the Japanese could be persuaded to curb their naval program, the race would end. The Japanese government, facing social unrest and economic bankruptcy from the large naval expenditures, finally agreed to participate. Italy and France, which had been unable to complete any new battleships during the war, had become, with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, rivals for mastery of the Mediterranean and so were invited to attend. The Soviet Union was not invited.

The U.S. secretary of state Charles Evans Hughes opened the conference in Washington, DC, on 21 November 1921, with representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy attending. The discussions began with a U.S. proposal to freeze capital ship construction for ten years. Several months of intense negotiations followed until, on 6 February 1922, a naval disarmament treaty was promulgated and signed. The Naval Limitation Treaty (also known as the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, or the Five-Power Naval Treaty) was perhaps the most successful arms limitation treaty of the twentieth century in that almost all the signatories observed its limits until 1936. Germany was not a signatory, but the Versailles Treaty had already prohibited the German construction of battleships. Not until 1935 were restrictions on German capital ship construction removed.

The treaty was intended to end the naval competition in battleships and battle cruisers between the world’s three largest navies. Italy and France were given special consideration, considering the obsolescence of their battleship fleets; they were each allowed a 70,000-ton limit within which to complete battleships during the time limit of the treaty. In return, the French were to scrap three older ships of the Courbet class, and Italy would be obligated to scrap two of its earlier battleships.

The treaty definition of standard displacement severely limited and constrained naval designers.⁴ It ended an age of naval competition in which battleships had been increasing in displacement and length to support more powerful armament, provide better protection, and allow higher speed. Hereafter, all ships designed to meet the treaty’s restrictions would be militarily imperfect ships, with certain essential features compromised in favor of more important ones. The modern battleship that evolved from the treaty would be a unique, fast warship that featured great offensive power in its guns combined with massive protection against gunnery, aerial, and underwater attack. Technical innovations in marine engineering and the evolution of ordnance aided these developments. Smaller ships, such as cruisers and destroyers, might successfully engage a battleship by relying on superior numbers, albeit likely sustaining heavy losses in the process. Individually, however, the smaller ships’ best protection from enemy capital ships was to avoid contact with them.

Eventually aircraft would become a significant threat to the battleship. In March 1921 U.S. Army Gen. William Billy Mitchell, who espoused the philosophy of Italian airpower advocate Giulio Douhet, made the startling claims that aircraft could sink battleships and that bombers offered a cheaper means of national defense than did a large fleet of battleships. However, Mitchell’s enticing slogan of a thousand aircraft for a battleship was based on the initial cost of the two weapons only; it did not allow for the life-cycle costs, which include operations, maintenance, and depreciation. The latter cost considerations favored the battleship.⁵ The U.S. Navy took up this challenge and provided the obsolete former German battleship Ostfriesland as a target for sensationalized bombing trials in the Chesapeake Bay during the summer of 1921. However, the latest American bombers were used, they were unopposed by antiaircraft gunfire, the battleship was unmanned and so could not attempt to control damage, and it was moored—a sitting duck.⁶ After several bombing runs, the German battleship rolled over and sank.

Despite the superficial implications of these trials, however, the aerial torpedo, not the bomb, would be the truly lethal weapon against capital ships. That fact would be proven by the Royal Navy’s attack on the Italian battle fleet at Taranto on 11 November 1940, the torpedoing of Bismarck in May 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, and the losses of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse in the South China Sea on 10 December 1941.

Protection and gun power were traditionally the most important elements in battleship design. Before World War I, typical battleships were capable of around twenty knots, as any greater speeds would demand much larger ships to accommodate the propulsion plants or require the sacrifice of armament, protection, or endurance. During the war, however, the naval battles of the Dogger Bank and Jutland highlighted the importance of superior speed for a battleship formation—it allowed the choice of gun range. The five battleships of the Queen Elizabeth class (completed in 1915–16) were fast (twenty-four knots), armed with 381-mm guns, and well protected. They set the standard for speed until the French Richelieu and the Italian Littorio were built in the mid-1930s. Gun size was increasing as well—to 406 mm, a caliber permitted by the 1921 Washington Treaty—so protection had to increase. However, the heavy ship propulsion machinery of the early 1920s required a large number of boilers, taking so much space that a fast battleship had to devote a large portion of the hull to its propulsion plant and sacrifice either armament or armor protection. Advances in marine engineering during the 1930s, particularly in boiler, turbine, and gear design, would reduce those technical constraints.

Based on the technology of the period and the Washington Naval Treaty definition of standard displacement, treaty battleships had to be steam powered. Steam propulsion plants were lighter (but less fuel efficient) than diesel installations generating the same horsepower. However, fuel and boiler feedwater were not counted in treaty-defined standard displacement limits. Heavy guns, massive armor systems, and adequate speed could be combined only in relatively large, tremendously expensive capital ships.

Not until the mid-1930s did more efficient and compact marine power plants become available; they would produce the power necessary for the first true fast battleships. Developments in land-based electrical power generating—plants in Germany and the United States contributed to these advances in marine engineering technology, which would be apparent in the propulsion plants of the Scharnhorst and Bismarck classes.

Naval constructors in the Construction Office of the High Command of the Navy (Ober Kommando Marine, or OKM) carefully followed developments in other navies, particularly those of France and the United States. The office was responsible for preparing designs to determine a proposed warship’s characteristics and speed, based on requirements set by the naval staff. German naval constructors were impressed by the battle cruiser Dunkerque, which the French navy ordered in 1930 as an answer to the first German armored ship, the Deutschland; by the turboelectric power plants of the American converted aircraft carriers USS Lexington and Saratoga; and by the new French liner Normandie⁷

The Design of the Deutschland Class

The origins of the Bismarck-class design can be traced to the dilemma German admirals faced after the battle of Jutland (31 May—1 June 1916). The kaiser had wanted a battleship design that combined speed with heavy armor and a 420-mm main battery that would negate the numerical superiority of the Royal Navy battleships and battle cruisers. Admiral Reinhard Scheer supported him, but the Construction Office and state secretary Admiral Eduard von Capelle held to the contemporary German policy of building both fast battle cruisers, with good armor protection but smaller-caliber main armament, and slower, heavily protected battleships. During the war, with its high seas fleet outnumbered in capital ship strength and hindered by material and labor shortages, the Kaiserliche marine eventually decided to employ unrestricted submarine warfare instead. The idea of the large and powerful battleship recommended by the kaiser and Admiral Scheer was shelved.

After the war, the restrictive terms of the Versailles Treaty prevented Germany from building battleships. The intention was clear: a treaty-constrained Reichsmarine would be able to protect German interests only to a limited extent, and the other navies of the world would have nothing to fear from it. Admiral Hans Zenker, the Reichsmarine commander in chief in 1925, was therefore faced with a dilemma in planning to rebuild the Reichsmarine. Zenker, anxious to resume design work and restore German influence among the maritime powers, recognized the lessons of World War I. However, a critical problem existed in the Construction Office, where staffing had been drastically reduced and numerous highly skilled naval constructors had left to seek employment elsewhere. This situation complicated the completion of the design of the light cruiser Emden in 1921. This cruiser had to be completed using the last wartime cruiser designs, with some modifications.

Zenker also had to deal with the Reichstag, which was reluctant to fund the rebuilding of the navy that he deemed necessary. The question became whether Germany should build a limited offensive fleet, with a capital ship of 10,000 tons with powerful armament but very limited protection and a modest maximum speed, or a coastal defense fleet of slow warships well protected from land-based artillery and suitable for protecting seaborne trade with the eastern provinces of Germany, which could be cut off by Poland. Should the new navy, then, consist of monitors and minesweepers? The new treaty-limited Reichsmarine developed several designs with a limited main battery ranging from 203 to 380 millimeters and with varying armor protection and speed. The decision was made to adopt 283-mm guns to avoid provoking France, Great Britain, and Italy.⁸

By 1927 design decisions for the lead ship became an urgent issue, as Baltic Station chief Admiral Erich Raeder had favored a slow coastal warship suitable for operations in the Baltic against the Soviet Union or Poland. As the design cycle progressed, three feasibility design concepts emerged for further study:

•Type A was a ship armed with six 305-mm and 15-cm guns with a 200-mm main side belt and a speed of twenty-one knots. ⁹

•Type B was a ship armed with six 305-mm and 15-cm guns with a 280-mm main side belt and a speed of eighteen knots.

•Type C featured six 283-mm and 15-cm guns with a main side belt of only 100 mm but a speed of twenty-six knots.

Type C was the final choice, on the premise that its speed would allow it to escape contemporary battleships but its armament and protection would be superior to those of the 10,000-ton heavy cruisers that many foreign navies were developing during this period. An important feature of the design was diesel propulsion, which allowed much greater endurance than steam. When the design work was completed, Admiral Zenker, with the concurrence of Admiral Raeder, began to obtain appropriations from the Reichstag for the construction of the first armored ship.

On 27 May 1927 Admiral Zenker announced that the Reichsmarine would build lightly protected armored ships (Panzerschiffe) armed with 283-mm guns (SK C/28) in two triple turrets; they would be able to deal effectively with heavy cruisers but would be fast enough at twenty-six to twenty-seven knots to evade battleships. This vessel was a hybrid of a heavy cruiser and a battleship—hence, the nickname pocket battleship. The only capital ships with superior speed were the British battle cruisers Hood, Repulse, and Renown and the Japanese battle cruisers of the Kongo class. Japan and Great Britain were not expected to be opponents; rather, Germany envisioned Poland and France as potential adversaries.

The proposed ships were more like heavy cruisers than battleships, albeit much more heavily armed than their foreign counterparts.¹⁰ These severely displacement-limited warships would feature diesel propulsion, structurally efficient longitudinal framing, and extensively welded structures to keep within the Versailles restrictions. (The 1919 treaty referred to displacement in long tons and did not define precisely what that meant. The Germans adopted instead the Washington Naval Treaty’s standard displacement usage, and the Allies tacitly consented by not objecting to the German initiative.¹¹) The Reichsmarine’s pioneering initiatives to save weight would influence the design and construction of later battleships, battle cruisers, and cruisers among all the naval powers. These armored ships were the first major warships to feature all-diesel propulsion, utilizing eight double-acting, two-stroke diesel engines produced by Maschi-nenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg (MAN). Despite these innovations, the three ships in the class—Deutschland, Admiral Scheer, and Admiral Graf Spee—eventually did violate the Versailles Treaty displacement limit of 10,000 long tons. They actually had displacements that ranged from 10,800 to 12,540 tonnes (10,629 to 12,314 tons).

Unfortunately for the Reichsmarine, a scandal was uncovered in the German military. Domestic critics of German armament expenditures learned that Captain Walter Lohmann, a member of Admiral Zenker’s staff, had approved covert funding unauthorized by the Reichstag. One of the recipients was the Engineering Bureau for Naval Construction (Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheeps-bouw, or IvS), a subsidiary of Krupp-owned shipyards Germaniawerft in Kiel and AG Weser in Bremen. Based in Holland since after World War I but staffed by German naval architects and marine engineers, IvS was designing submarines for foreign countries, such as Spain, Turkey, and Finland. Covert funds were also arranged for the development of a magnetic mine. Zenker was forced to resign in 1928, along with minister of defense Otto Gessler.

Admiral Raeder was promoted to commander of the fleet on 1 October 1928. Raeder stoutly defended the appropriation in 1927 for the armored cruiser concept against severe opposition in the Reichstag, despite his earlier negative views on this ship’s design. Funds would be approved for the new ship’s construction, which was subsequently delayed by political opposition to the appropriation. This new ship became a major issue in the Reichstag elections in May 1928, particularly with the Social Democrats, who strongly opposed their construction and campaigned with the slogan "Panzerkreuzer or food for children. The slogan’s ominous warning overlooked the fact that building the ship meant employment for shipyard workers. In those May elections, the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, won twelve seats, overcoming the Social Democrats. The Reichstag approved the expenditure by a narrow vote of 255 to 203 in October 1928. On 5 November 1928 the first armored ship was authorized for construction. Foreign naval periodicals would later praise it as the warship of the future and a pacesetter in the reduction in the size of battleships.

Admiral Raeder offered to abandon the Panzerschiff project on 25 January 1930 in return for acceptance of Germany as a signatory of the Washington Naval Treaty, assigned an aggregate capital ship displacement limited to 25 percent of that of either of the Anglo-Saxon naval powers. France rejected this proposal, while other signatories of the treaty were noncommittal. Raeder never cared for the armored ship program, privately calling such ships an unfortunate design forced on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. He much preferred to build large capital ships. He did recognize, however, that the armored ships kept German shipyards functioning and the naval budget open until the treaty restrictions on German capital ships were lifted. During World War I, the naval blockade of Germany had been a key factor leading to German defeat; one of Hitler’s goals when he assumed power was a limited revival of the Reichsmarine.

Before Hitler came to power, minister of defense General Wilhelm Gröner and Admiral Raeder discussed the naval plan for the Reichsmarine in November 1932, which envisioned the construction of a total of six armored ships, with the material for fourth and fifth armored ships being authorized for purchase. The first armored ship, Deutschland (renamed Lützow in 1939), was given protection sufficient to withstand only 15-cm shell fire.¹² In two additional armored ship design variants, the protective scheme was upgraded slightly; the last ship of the type, Admiral Graf Spee, had a side belt of 100 mm carried one deck higher than in the previous two ships and had heavier forward and aft armored bulkheads of the same thickness. These changes increased the design displacement to approximately 13,880 tonnes on an ostensibly 10,000-ton warship. The full-load displacement was 16,227 tonnes. The effort to balance the protection with the armament illustrates the difficulty imposed on the Construction Office by the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. These clauses pertaining to the German navy were among the issues that Hitler would exploit during his rise to power, calling the peace treaty vengeful. The German people hated the many impositions it inflicted on them.

Diesel propulsion gave these ships great endurance. Germany was dependent upon foreign oil and lacked geographically dispersed bases and a substantial capability for at-sea logistics support. Therefore, the Reichsmarine had to design warships with superior fuel economy to achieve the requisite speed and endurance in the open oceans. However, although it required less fuel than a steam plant of comparable power, a diesel installation was much heavier than a comparable steam-turbine propulsion arrangement. This fact worked against the designers since fuel did not count in standard displacement, the defining measure set by the treaty. Also, the diesel plants in the cruiser Leipzig and training ship Bremse had been subject to troubling noise and vibration. At-sea tests sought solutions to reduce their underwater noise, but no satisfactory remedies to these problems with their foundation designs were ever found. Consequently, these two ships would experience engine problems throughout their careers.

Four important points factored into the choice of diesel engines. Diesels were more quickly lit off than steam systems, required fewer personnel and less space, generated better acceleration, and were economical in fuel consumption. The latter was most important, for it allowed a larger radius of operation than steam propulsion for the same power. Another advantage in battle was the absence of a steam hazard to machinery-space personnel following battle damage. Diesel engines, of course, could not use the typical bunker fuel oil burned in marine steam plants.

When the third armored ship, Admiral Graf Spee, was ordered on 23 August 1932, diesel propulsion was still being questioned. Research into high-pressure and high-temperature steam plants suitable for marine use had begun in 1929, with promising results. A successful boiler and turbine design had been developed for the passenger ship Scharnhorst, prompting interest in a steam plant for what would be the final armored ship. The engineering department decided against steam for Admiral Graf Spee, arguing that solutions to the noise and vibration difficulties of diesel propulsion were being tested. (Resilient foundations, which evolved decades later, would have ameliorated the noise problems of the diesel engine.) However, the most significant objection to a steam installation was the amount of fuel that would be required to achieve the same endurance as that of the two earlier ships, despite less machinery weight. Germany’s lack of an internal source of oil settled the debate. On 16 August 1932, Admiral Raeder decided that the propulsion plant of the third armored ship would be the same as that of her predecessors, though slightly heavier than in the second armored ship, Admiral Scheer.

Construction of the first armored ship took two years after her keel was laid on 5 February 1929. Budgetary restrictions and debate in the Reichstag would delay the authorization of the second ship until 1931. During this period, Admiral Raeder and his advisers made it known that Germany could not prevent a French fleet from entering the Baltic; it could only engage such a fleet in the western approaches before it could reach its Polish ally. Further complications arose when the French navy announced the construction of a new battle cruiser, Dunkerque, which would have superior armor, be faster, and have a more powerful armament of eight 330-mm guns than the first two German armored ships. To counter this development, Admiral Raeder wanted the third armored ship to be an improved version of the German World War I battle cruiser Von der Tann. In the meantime, the Reichstag informed Raeder that naval expansion would be limited to only three armored ships, with a fourth possibly under construction by 1936. Nevertheless, the Construction Office continued its studies of conventional battleships.

A noteworthy and disastrous event occurred in the Reichsmarine on 18 August 1932. The school sailing ship Niobe suddenly capsized during a line squall off Fehmarn Island, east of Kiel. A total of sixty-nine officers and crew perished—almost the entire 1932 class of candidates for the line, medical, engineering, and petty officer corps. The board of inquiry called to investigate could find no culpable neglect or nonperformance of duty; the cause was simply a tragic combination of unusual weather and sea conditions. The firm of Blohm and Voss now designed the school sailing ship Gorch Fock, which impressed Admiral Raeder with its safety-related engineering features.¹³ As a result of this effort, Raeder decided that Blohm and Voss would become the lead builder for German battleships.

This prewar photograph shows the Admiral Graf Spee at sea. She and her two sisters were heavy cruisers fitted with battle cruiser-type armament. Note the low bow freeboard that would prove troublesome during operations in World War II.

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

All three armored ships served in nonintervention patrols during the Spanish Civil War. Deutschland was damaged by a bomb off Ibiza in 1937, and in retaliation Admiral Scheer bombarded the port of Almería. When World War II began, these ships would see active service in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Upgrades to all three were planned from 1940 through 1943, but the early advent of war prevented any major reconstruction.

These armored ships may have represented an ingenious design response to severe displacement restrictions, but their inadequate protection was a factor in the outcome of the battle of the River Plate on 13 December 1939. Two British light cruisers, Ajax and Achilles, with 152-mm guns, and the heavy cruiser Exeter, with 203-mm guns, were able to inflict serious damage on Graf Spee, forcing Captain Hans Langsdorff to seek repairs in the neutral port of Montevideo, Uruguay. There, on 17 December 1939, convinced he would be engaging an overwhelming force while short of ammunition and unable to repair crucial battle damage (such as the loss of the ship’s galley, bakery, and auxiliary boiler, plus a large hole in the bow), Langsdorff scuttled his ship.¹⁴ (The scuttling of Graf Spee in itself proved difficult, convincing Admiral Raeder that better means of scuttling a seriously damaged ship had to be found.)

Nevertheless, long-range main armament, large cruising endurance, and good speed made these ships very effective in operations against British commerce early in World War II until the advent of radar and aircraft carriers and the more skillful deployment of British naval forces.

THE DESIGN OF THE SCHARNHORST CLASS

In November 1932 Admiral Erich Raeder and General Wilhelm Gröner, defense minister for the Weimar Republic, agreed on a policy to rebuild the Reichsmarine in three stages within the terms of the Versailles Treaty. France and Poland were still considered the republic’s major potential enemies. Admiral Raeder had proposed a daring strategy in the event of war with Poland that would involve a surprise attack on the Polish fleet in Gdynia at the outset of hostilities, countering French naval intervention from the west by preventing the French fleet from entering the Baltic. This strategy would have required a larger German fleet than Gröner was willing to propose to the Reichstag. He made it clear to Raeder that he was not a large-fleet enthusiast.

The two reached a compromise that allowed a modest building program to be submitted to the Reichstag in November 1932. This program would be achieved in three stages. Eventually, six modern armored ships would replace the six obsolete pre-dreadnoughts permitted by Versailles. Additionally, the program envisioned an aircraft carrier, a naval air force, six cruisers, six destroyer flotillas, six torpedo boat flotillas, and sixteen submarines by 1938 (if the political situation remained favorable).

Several covert projects relating to magnetic mines and submarines continued with a sort of legality, as Raeder termed it. In 1932 the German naval high command had prepared for the resumption of submarine construction, and by February 1935 U-boat construction had begun— before the Anglo-German Naval Treaty was signed in June 1935.¹⁵ This treaty would allow the Kriegsmarine to build capital ships. The first German submarines had been designed by IvS. The frames and plating for future German submarines had been built in sections abroad, delivered to Germany in crates, and hidden in Kiel until their assembly was permitted.¹⁶ In June 1934 Hitler told Admiral Raeder that complete secrecy had to be maintained in the construction of submarines.¹⁷ Construction of U-1 secretly began in February 1935 at Deutsche Werke in Kiel.

Admiral Raeder was a disciple of the policies of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who had favored a fleet built around battleships. When Adolf Hitler assumed power in Germany in 1933, he made clear that he had no intention of building a navy to challenge Great Britain’s Royal Navy, as Kaiser Wilhelm II had done prior to 1914. He did, however, recognize the need for ships to defend against the Soviet Union, Poland, or France. In his book Mein Kampf, in which he outlined his political philosophy, Hitler also criticized the Kaiserliche marine and the ambitious naval program begun by Admiral von Tirpitz with the full support of the kaiser.

Hitler recognized the United Kingdom’s dominance in sea power, and he hoped to reach an understanding with the British government that would allow him to pursue his territorial aims in continental Europe. Admiral Raeder told Hitler that he was prepared to expand the navy to any degree that might be necessary.¹⁸ In October 1933, Germany withdrew from an international disarmament conference being held in Geneva and then from the League of Nations. Hitler claimed in justification the conference’s failure to recognize Germany’s equality of rights.

The rebuilding of the French navy from 1929 to 1939 and France’s military alliance with Poland significantly affected German naval developments. The battle cruiser Dunkerque influenced the future German fleet, because she was a faster, better protected, and more powerfully armed ship than the Deutschland class. In 1934 the French parliament approved an improved sister ship, Strasbourg, as an answer to the third German armored ship then being built. Both French warships were armed with eight 330-mm guns in two quadruple turrets forward of the bridge. In fact the French navy had been rebuilt with numerous modern, powerful new warships. This effort reflected the French government policy of concerted military action under the League of Nations to intervene in regional conflicts where naval ships might be required to support ground forces.

Adolf Hitler met with Admiral Raeder on 2 February 1933 to discuss his views on the Reichsmarine’s future. He claimed to want to live in peace with England, Italy, and Japan under all circumstances. Although France had been steadily increasing the size of its fleet, Hitler and Raeder did not discuss future relations with France or the Soviet Union. Nor did Hitler discuss his policy of the acquisition of living space in Eastern Europe with Admiral Raeder.

The Reichsmarine was still interested in starting the construction of a fifth armored ship, a fourth ship having been authorized by the Reichstag as part of the 1934 program. A decision had to be made on the particulars of "Armored Ship (Panzerschiff) D," particularly its main armament, by October 1933. Adolf Hitler visited the fleet at Kiel in May 1933 to discuss with Admiral Raeder future expansion of the fleet, including a fifth armored ship. Raeder wanted these ships to be armed with 330-mm guns. Hitler would not agree, as such a gun would exceed the terms of the Versailles Treaty and result in international repercussions at a time when Germany was just starting to rearm. Hitler subsequently would give his approval for the fifth ship in 1934, but the main batteries of these two armored ships had to be 283 mm, as in the earlier three armored ships.

The French battle cruiser Dunkerque was designed to counter the German armored ships of the Deutschland class. This vessel, with its main armament of 330-mm guns and a speed of thirty knots, influenced the design of the Kreigsmarine’s capital ships.

AUTHORS’ COLLECTION

The Reichsmarine had planned to build six armored ships by 1938. The planning for the fourth armored ship (Panzerschiff D) began in a conference in Berlin in March 1933, with a decision that the projected opponent would be the new French Dunkerque, whose construction had been announced in 1932. Design work began on a ship with a speed of twenty-eight knots, a main armament of two triple turrets with 283-mm guns, and an armored citadel capable of withstanding a 330-mm shell. Intense discussion surrounded the subject of the main armament. Should the main armament be 283-mm guns, as in the three armored ships, or should it be a 330-mm gun, as in Dunkerque?¹⁹ The length had to be increased to achieve the required speed. The inner limit for the protected zone against the 330-mm gun firing an armor-piercing shell was set at 18,000 meters, and the outer limit was determined to be 25,000 meters. If it were not possible to achieve an armor system that could protect against a 330-mm armor-piercing shell, a high-explosive 330-mm shell would have to suffice as the protective standard. This development translated into a 320-mm side armor belt and an 80-mm deck over the magazines, which could be stepped down to 70 mm over the propulsion plant. The main battery was to be either 330-mm or 283-mm guns in triple turrets. All these decisions resulted in a standard displacement of 18,000 long tons, with less than satisfactory armament. Several feasibility designs were prepared:

•An armored ship of 19,000 tonnes armed with six 283-mm guns, at a cost of 120 million Reichsmarks (RM)

•An armored ship of 22,000 tonnes with eight 330-mm guns, at a cost of 150 million RM

•An armored ship of 26,000 tonnes that would feature steam propulsion capable of twenty-nine knots and an armament of nine 283-mm guns, at a cost of 180 million RM.

Admiral Raeder entered the discussions, suggesting that the Construction Office investigate alternative designs with quadruple, triple, or twin turrets. In addition, he suggested a battleship armed with 283-mm guns at a displacement of 22,000 tons. A conference on 23 June 1933 reviewed the design work and agreed that the armor protection had to be increased. The Marinewaffenamt (Bureau of Ordnance) wanted 15-cm twin mounts instead of the single mounts used in the three armored ships and proposed a stronger antiaircraft armament. All this was to be accomplished in a ship of 18,000 tons, whose design was to be completed in 1934 so that a keel could be laid in 1935.

An important development during the design of Armored Ship D was a change in the hull profile. Previous armored ships had had long forecastles that were stepped down aft in way of the steering-gear room, which was a weight-saving measure. To enhance reserve buoyancy, seaworthiness, structural design, and stability, these new armored ships would have weather decks that would not be stepped down—that is, flush decks. The discontinuity in the top deck aft in the first three armored ships was a point of structural weakness, as was later shown when Lützow was torpedoed in the stern in April 1940. German designers decided that all subsequent cruisers and battleships would have flush decks, a principle that was adhered to in the Scharnhorst and Bismarck classes.

An important consideration in the design of larger and more capable ships was the draft limitations imposed by German harbors and the Kiel Canal. Even the height of the Levensau High Bridge over the Kiel Canal became a factor in the design and arrangement of the forward command tower, which would mount the rangefinders and gun directors of any battleship or battle cruiser. Mounting these positions higher than in World War I battleships and battle cruisers would allow enemy warships to be sighted at greater ranges and take advantage of the longer range of newly developed guns.

A conference on 11 October 1933 determined the final particulars of the fourth and fifth armored ships, including the design of the forward command tower, the 15-cm armament, and the main armament, which would be two triple 283-mm gun turrets. The flush deck required the torpedo tubes to be moved to the midships area, where there was a problem of location, as the secondary and antiaircraft armament had priority. The official displacement was said to be 19,000 tons, but that figure was crossed out in the original document and replaced with 17,000 tons. Hitler permitted the displacement to exceed the Versailles Treaty allowance of 10,000 tons.

Contracts were signed with two shipyards for the construction of Armored Ships D and E. On 25 January 1934, the keel was laid for Armored Ship D—Ersatz Elsass (the nominal replacement for the pre-dreadnought battleship Elsass)—at the Wilhelmshaven Navy Yard. The keel for Armored Ship E was laid at Deutsche Werke Shipyard (Ersatz Hessen). These ships were to have standard displacements of 18,000 tons, two triple 283-mm and four twin 15-cm turrets, and diesel propulsion. The only question that remained was the gun size of the main armament—330 or 283 mm. After the keels of both ships had been laid down, Admiral Raeder decided that their defensive characteristics and speed should be upgraded for parity with the French Dunkerque.

Raeder, in fact, was not satisfied with the design of these two armored ships. He now sought from Hitler approval to add a third turret, which would result in a displacement greater than that permitted by the Versailles Treaty. Hitler told Admiral Raeder that, for political reasons, he would not approve an armored ship with a third turret and a 26,500-ton standard displacement. He also instructed Raeder to make no mention of a 25,000- or 26,500-ton displacement, but only an improved 10,000-ton ship. On 27 June 1934 Hitler chided Raeder for publicly discussing a 26,500-ton displacement. Hitler said that he would only permit some preliminary plans to be prepared for a three-turret ship. Admiral Raeder decided to continue investigations into the armament of these two new armored ships and requested feasibility studies for a ship of 26,500-ton standard displacement with three armament variants: four twin turrets of 330-mm guns, two quadruple turrets of 330-mm guns, and three triple 330-mm gun turrets.

If these alternatives should prove impractical, he suggested that a 305-mm gun be substituted. Developmental work on a new 305-mm gun was already under way. Since the Krupp works, charged with building these guns, were in the French-occupied sector of the Rhineland, production was limited to only a gun or so per year—a crippling disadvantage. During the early 1930s Great Britain lobbied unsuccessfully with representatives of the French and Italian navies for a 25,000-ton limit on battleship displacement and a maximum gun size of 305 mm. Several of the World War I German battle cruisers had mounted 305-mm guns.

It soon became evident to the Construction Office that a standard displacement of 26,500 tons was necessary to accommodate the design requirements for protection, a speed of thirty knots, and a 330-mm armament. Finding a shipyard and dock capable of building such a large ship in Germany was difficult, as the Wilhelmshaven and the Blohm and Voss yards were the only possibilities.

Some consideration was given to arming these ships with 380-mm guns. However, to mount such guns, the ships’ design would have to be totally changed, substantially delaying their completion. The displacement of such a ship also would far exceed that permitted by treaty. Furthermore, Admiral Raeder believed that while such an armament would have been a political problem in 1934, another naval conference that was planned for 1935 might produce new terms more favorable to Germany.

On 11 April 1934 Hitler, accompanied by Nazi Party leaders and top-ranking military officers, went on board the armored cruiser Deutschland to observe a set-piece military exercise in Prussia and the western Baltic. While at sea, Deutschland fired her 283-mm guns, impressing Hitler with the performance of large-caliber guns. Hitler used this opportunity to reach a secret deal with his officers for their support in his bid for the presidency when the ailing President Paul von Hindenburg died. Hitler made some concessions, one of which was a two-thirds reduction of his private brown-shirt army, which was causing unrest in Germany. This deal was the famous Deutschland pact, which would allow Hitler to combine the offices of president and chancellor and become the supreme ruler of Germany. Admiral Raeder used this and other conferences with Hitler to push for construction of a ship of 26,500 tons standard displacement with 305-mm guns.

There was much political unrest in Germany, particularly within the Nazi Party. By June 1934, despite the rumors of plots and counterplots, Hitler decided to make a three-day state visit to Italy to meet with Benito Mussolini, whose policies Hitler greatly admired. The meeting in Venice did not go well, however; Mussolini did not show much enthusiasm for Hitler’s plan to annex Austria. The Italian dictator informed Hitler that Italy supported Austria’s leader, Engelbert Dollfuss, and Austrian independence.

Mussolini was also secretly afraid that Hitler would demand for Germany Austrian provinces that had been ceded to Italy after World War I. During his brief visit to Venice, Hitler learned about Italy’s new military might: a modern air force and a rebuilt navy of modern cruisers and destroyers. Four old battleships were being modernized, and a new class of 35,000-ton battleships was to be built.²⁰ An announcement of their future construction had been made on 10 June, coinciding with the collapse of the disarmament conference in Geneva.²¹ Hitler returned to Germany to report on his visit with Mussolini but also to address the political situation at home.

Vice Chancellor