Kriegsmarine

The Reichsmarine was renamed the Kriegsmarine in 1935, at the same time as the Reichswehr became the Wehrmacht. A vast surface-fleet programme, Plan Z of 1939, was meant to give Germany a navy able to take on the Royal Navy by the mid-1940s, but the war cut it short almost at once. At dawn on 1 September 1939 the Kriegsmarine training battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire on the Polish depot at Westerplatte.

Its big surface ships, such as Bismarck, Tirpitz and Scharnhorst, won a few famous successes, but all were sunk or put out of action. The navy’s main weapon became the U-boats fighting the Battle of the Atlantic. In spring 1945 Kriegsmarine ships evacuated hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians from the Baltic coast. After the surrender the Allies divided the fleet, and the Kriegsmarine was dissolved in 1945.