German battleship Bismarck

Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for the German Kriegsmarine during World War II. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind the German unification in 1871, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched two and a half years later in February 1939. Work was completed in August 1940, when she was commissioned into the German fleet. Along with her sister ship Tirpitz, Bismarck was the largest battleship ever built by Germany, and one of the largest built by any European power.

In the course of her short career, Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation, in May 1941, codenamed Rheinübung. The ship, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, however, and British naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of Denmark Strait, Bismarck engaged and destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the pride of theRoyal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat with heavy damage, although Bismarck herself had been hit three times and suffered an oil leak from a ruptured tank.

German Cruiser Kriegsmarine

GERMANY: K-CLASS [Köln pictured]

All three units failed to survive World War II. The Königsburg was bombed by British aircraft on 10 April 1940, and subsequently scrapped in 1943. The Karlsruhe was torpedoed by a British submarine on 9 April 1940 and scuttled due to the damage sustained. The Köln was sunk by an Allied bombing raid and broken up in 1946.

Germany, one of the great naval powers before World War I, could not entertain hopes of rebuilding its navy. The Treaty of Versailles had required that Germany surrender its newest and most powerful warships, which left the country with a collection of obsolete vessels useful only as a coast-defense force. The terms provided for the replacement of obsolete vessels when necessary, but Germany was allowed to possess only eight light cruisers that could not exceed 6,000 tons; capital ships could not exceed 10,000 tons of displacement with 11-inch guns. Between 1921 and 1928, the Weimar government exercised its option to replace some of its old vessels when it laid down five new light cruisers. The first of these, Emden, was merely a ship built to the specifications of the country’s World War I era vessels. The next three warships of the K-class, however, were built using a totally new and innovative design.