A German naval officer casts a forlorn glance at the unfinished hull of the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin; although construction began in 1936, work continued only sporadically during the war and the ship was never completed.

Though upon coming to power Hitler professed he sought no war with England, his aggressive foreign policy soon set Germany on a path that inexorably led to just such a conflict. In November 1937, he confided to his closest associates he expected Britain would eventually move to block his expansionist policies. The following year he officially informed Raeder that, contrary to his prior assertions, war with England was indeed inevitable, but not before 1944, and that the fleet should plan its construction program accordingly.

In response, the navy drew up two possible programs. One called for primarily a submarine force, augmented by surface raiders, while the other aimed at a big-ship, big-gun surface fleet. In January 1939 Raeder presented both schemes to Hitler, who chose the big-ship, big-gun option – the “Z-Plan” – which called for eight battleships, 12 battlecruisers, 17 light cruisers, two aircraft carriers, 50 destroyers, 64 torpedo boats and 22 submarines by 1945.

Hitler’s personal fascination with big, prestigious battleships was a decisive factor in his adoption of the capital- ship-laden alternative. His selection delighted Raeder, who was also a big-ship, big-gun devotee who’d served aboard the battlecruiser Seydlitz at Jutland in World War I and had authored a book on cruiser warfare in 1922. The passage of time had done nothing to alter the admiral’s views; as late as 1939 he claimed: “Battleships alone are able to win or defend the supremacy of the seas.” The Z-Plan relegated aircraft carriers to a minor role. Raeder derisively referred to them as mere “gasoline carriers,” useless in the stormy North Atlantic and Baltic, where the decisive actions were expected to take place.

While constructing a big-gun surface fleet was the objective, movement toward that end was immediately frustrated by massive obstacles, for the German shipbuilding industry had been devastated after World War I. As retribution for Germany’s scuttling of her interned fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919, the British had confiscated 80 percent of the nation’s floating dockyards.

Warship construction orders were of course scarce in the postwar years, and the merchant ship industry also languished in the hard economic times. Consequently, German shipyards were hard pressed to provide the skilled manpower and facilities needed to fulfill the immense contracts that began to be issued by the Kriegsmarine. As early as 1937, even before the adoption of the Z-Plan, Raeder had complained those bottlenecks were threatening to bring naval construction to a standstill, and that even for the already existing ships a shortage of ammunition was looming.

Two years later the German shipbuilding industry was still struggling to meet the navy’s burgeoning construction schedule, and on the day Hitler approved the Z-Plan Raeder warned him completing it within six years might well be beyond the nation’s abilities. The Fuhrer was not sympathetic; he told the admiral: “If I can build the Third Reich in six years, then the navy can surely build these ships in six years.”

Though more time might have allowed Germany to expand her maritime industrial base, no amount of time could have furnished her with the natural resources necessary to complete the Z-Plan. When he approved the plan, Hitler also attempted to stimulate shipbuilding by formally giving the Kriegsmarine priority in raw materials over both the army and air force. But in 1939, Germany was already importing nearly 70 percent of her iron ore, and virtually all her nickel, tungsten, vanadium and manganese, all indispensable elements for the production of the high-grade steel required for warships. The German economy, still recovering from the hyperinflation of the 1920s and the global depression of the 1930s, was further shackled by a shortage of both hard currency reserves and foreign earnings, which prevented a rapid increase in domestic production.

The supply of oil to fuel the proposed ships was equally precarious. Germany possessed no domestic oil reserves, and even though production of synthetics more than tripled between 1929 and 1937, in that year the Reich still imported nearly 60 percent of its peacetime oil requirements. Germany was thus extremely vulnerable to sharp reductions in the supply of essential raw materials in the event of a peacetime embargo or wartime blockade, either of which would abort the Z-Plan. The outbreak of war in fact prevented the Z-Plan, unrealistic to begin with, from ever coming anywhere near completion. Once embroiled in a shooting war that eliminated the luxury of being able to wait five years for battleships to join the fleet, Raeder suspended the plan and ordered priority be given to the construction of U-boats, which at the time were being completed at the rate of only two per month.