For educational purposes<br /><br />THE FORGOTTEN SERVICE : Adolf Hitler had promised his Naval commanders that there would be no war in Europe before 1942. <br /><br />Accordingly plans were laid for the best Naval force in the world, but when Hitler precipitated the Second World War in 1939, only a fraction of the necessary ships and submarines were ready. <br /><br />At the outbreak of World War Two Germany did not even possess a single aircraft carrier. <br /><br />The battleships Bismark and Tirpitz fought famous actions at sea, but the Kreigsmarine was always on the back foot, crippled by superior opponents and strangled by bureaucratic neglect at home.
