The Armament Aims of the German Navy

Abstract

From 1933 onwards the rearmament of the Army and Luftwaffe was characterised by a steady expansion of the scope and aims of their individual programmes and by their acceleration and demands for rapid results. This meant that between 1933–9 Admiral Raeder and the Navy leadership faced almost insoluble problems. Tirpitz himself had never tired of stressing that a fleet could not be built in a day but rather required decades, an opinion shared by Raeder.¹ The question whether the Navy could strike a balance between, on the one hand, the necessarily long-term nature of naval armament and, on the other, the tempo set by Hitler and the other two services in their attempt to restore Germany’s Great Power status depended not least on the armaments goals fixed for the Navy by its own leadership.