It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war Reichsmarine (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The Kriegsmarine was one of three official branches, along with the Heer and the Luftwaffe, of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces from 1935 to 1945.

The list of Kriegsmarine ships includes all ships commissioned into the Kriegsmarine, the navy of Nazi Germany, during its existence from 1935 to the conclusion of World War II in 1945. See the list of naval ships of Germany for ships in German service throughout the country's history.

The WW2 German Navy (Kriegsmarine) was modest in 1939, but compensated by individual quality, from the heavy cruiser Blucher to the battleship Bismarck.

The Reichswehr consisted of 100,000 men divided between a small standing army, the Reichsheer, and a small defensive navy, the Reichsmarine. In 1933 the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) came to power and the infamous Third Reich was born.

The organization of the Kriegsmarine refers to the operational and administrative structure of the German Navy from 1935 to 1945. Many of the organizational tenets of the Kriegsmarine were inherited from its predecessor the Reichsmarine.

The German navy was poorly equipped to resist the massive invasion force that the Allies assembled at Normandy. A success was scored by S-boats during Operation Tiger off the Devon coast in late April 1944, but otherwise Hitler’s navy made little …

In The German Navy in World War II, Edward P. Von der Porten presents a broad, accurate view of German naval strategy employed during World War II. The author stales that the period from the scuttling of the Imperial High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow on 21 June 1919 until construction started on the battle cruiser Deutschland in 1928, was one ...

Kriegsmarine 1935 to 1945 Development history of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during Second World War including, Bismarck, Admiral Graf Spee, Tirpitz, Gneisenau, and many more, career service, technical data and photographs.

At the outbreak of World War II, the German Kriegsmarine consisted of 11 Ships of the size of a CL or bigger, while 7 additional ships were under construction. This small fleet was supported by 21 destroyers and 57 U-boats, most of them only usable for small coastal operations.

Hitler had been presented with two choices for his navy. The first proposed a cheap, light, flexible force, centered on submarines and the small but powerfully armed long-range cruisers that the British had nicknamed “pocket battleships.” This plan had no pretensions to challenging Britain as a naval power but carried great potential to harm her.