During World War II, the German Navy performed disastrously, much worse than the German fleet during World War I; before the outbreak of World War I, Germany's high seas fleet, although far less than Britain's, still had 16 dreadnoughts, 6 former dreadnoughts, 5 battlecruisers, and a series of other warships, and the scale was not small, because the core idea of the German Admiral Tirpitz at that time was to make Britain jealous.
During the First World War, the German Navy and the British Royal Navy had a major war (the Battle of Jutland), and the result was astounding, the German High Seas Fleet sank 3 British battlecruisers, 3 armored cruisers and 8 destroyers; while it itself was only sunk 1 battlecruiser, 1 former dreadnought, 4 light cruisers and 5 torpedo boats; this is probably the best record in the history of the German Navy.
During world war II, except for the later "wolf pack tactics" of Dönitz, which were successful in the attack on merchant ships, the frontal battlefield was completely crushed by the British navy. Why was the German Navy so weak? There are two core factors, the first is that after the end of World War I, most Of the German warships chose to sink themselves, and a small number of warships were divided between the United States, Britain, France, and Japan; that is, the German warships during World War II were almost all rebuilt.
The so-called "thirty years of army, fifty years of air force, one hundred years of navy", the navy is the most "money-burning" of all services, building a warship, not only need to consume a lot of manpower and material resources, but also the construction time is long, the types of technology involved are also extremely diverse; to build a complete naval fleet, but not overnight. After Adolf came to power, Raeder, then commander-in-chief of the Navy, proposed to him "Plan Z" for building a huge fleet.
Adolf was a cannonist who was very supportive of The "Plan Z" proposed by Riddle, and it is worth mentioning that in the "Plan Z", plans were proposed not only for the construction of various warships, but also for the construction of large aircraft carriers. If Raeder's plan could succeed, the German navy would still have the strength to face the British navy; unfortunately, the time was not waiting, and when the war with Britain was waged, "Plan Z" was not yet completed, but there was no way, and Raeder had to lead a small number of troops to fight.
The reason for the slow progress of Project Z is not only the long construction time of warships, but also related to the status of the navy; Germany is a European continent country, the most important is naturally the army, after Adolf accepted Guderian's "blitzkrieg" theory, most of the manpower and material resources were invested in the development and construction of armored forces. "Blitzkrieg" is a tactical theory of air-ground integration, so the Air Force has also been supported by a considerable part of manpower and material resources.
Compared with the construction of the German Army, the construction of the Luftwaffe is really shocking, the German Army still has a foundation, but the Luftwaffe is simply "poor and white"; but because the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force is Adolf's absolute confidant Goering, for a long period of time, more than 40% of the German military expenditure is spent on the Air Force, accounting for a very high proportion. However, the total amount of military expenditure is so much, although Germany is an industrial power, it is still a small country and a small number of people, and the resources are scarce.
With the Army and Air Force taking up most of the money, the German Navy was really difficult to make a difference, and it was very good to be able to build 3 German-class battleships and 2 Bismarck-class battleships, as well as a number of other warships. Britain had 15 battleships and battlecruisers, 7 aircraft carriers, 64 light and heavy cruisers, 119 destroyers, and a large number of auxiliary ships such as frigates, submarines, and minesweepers.
In addition, there are 5 aircraft carriers, 5 battleships, 23 cruisers, 52 destroyers and a large number of ships under construction in the British shipyard; this is only the data before the war between the British and German navies, with the background of Britain's old maritime powers, more warships can be built during the war; and the quality of British naval officers is far greater than that of German naval officers, and the difficulty of training naval soldiers is not lower than that of air force soldiers, which also requires actual combat and time accumulation.
In short, Although Raeder tried his best, he did his best, but he lacked time and military expenditure; the sinking of the battleship Bismarck declared the complete bankruptcy of Redel's "Project Z", and Adolf also lost confidence in the surface fleet, and transferred the expectation of success to Dönitz's submarine force. It has to be said that Dönitz's submarine force is indeed very strong, and they dominate the Atlantic With "wolf pack tactics", resulting in huge losses to Allied merchant ships and serious damage to logistical supply lines.
But it is obviously wrong to pin all hopes on submarines, because the submarine class is too single, although the "wolf pack tactic" has caused the Allies to suffer huge losses, but this tactic is not impossible to crack; the Allies, after carefully studying the tactics of german submarines, sent a large number of anti-submarine aircraft and submarines, flexibly using "sniper", "encirclement", "booby trap" and other means to dismember the "wolf pack", especially the use of the latest radar to search for German submarines, causing devastating blows to the German submarine force.
In general, Redel Dönitz, the only two German admirals of World War II, have tried their best, but a powerful navy cannot be built overnight; the German navy lacks time the most, but Adolf does not give them enough time to build warships and train naval officers; and the military expenditure they receive is far less than that of the army and air force, so it is understandable that the results are so poor.