Strasbourg was laid down in November 1934, was launched in December 1936, and was commissioned in September 1938 as the international situation in Europe was steadily deteriorating due to Nazi Germany's increasingly aggressive behavior.

Strasbourg was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet upon entering service; her only significant peacetime activities consisted of visits to Portugal in May 1939 and a tour of Great Britain in May and June that year.

A 17,500-ton cruiser, which could have handled the Trentos, was inadequate against the old Italian battleships, however, and the 37,000-ton battlecruiser concepts were prohibitively expensive and would jeopardize further naval limitation talks.

[4][5] Parliamentary approval was granted for the first member of the class in early 1932,[6] and Strasbourg was ordered on 16 July 1934 with the design unchanged but with greater armor thicknesses and increased weight.

She was powered by four Parsons geared steam turbines and six oil-fired Indret boilers, which developed a total of 112,500 shaft horsepower (83,900 kW) and yielded a maximum speed of 29.5 knots (54.6 km/h; 33.9 mph).

Strasbourg departed Saint-Nazaire on 15 June 1938, bound for Brest, France; while en route she conducted brief speed tests.

By this time, the international situation in Europe had begun to worsen as Nazi Germany began making increasingly hostile demands on its neighbors.

[12][13] Strasbourg joined Dunkerque on 1 May for the first time for a cruise to Lisbon, Portugal on 1 May, arriving there two days later for a celebration of the anniversary of Pedro Álvares Cabral's discovery of Brazil.

The group, which was under the command of Vice-amiral d'Escadre (Squadron Vice Admiral) Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, also included three light cruisers and eight large destroyers, and was based in Brest.

British observers informed the French Navy that the German "pocket battleships" of the Deutschland class had gone to sea in late August, bound for the Atlantic, and that contact with the vessels had been lost.

On 2 September, the day after Germany invaded Poland, but before France and Britain declared war, the Force de Raid sortied from Brest to guard against a possible attack by the Deutschlands.

Strasbourg left Brest on 7 October in company with the destroyer Volta and a division of torpedo boats, meeting Hermes off Camaret-sur-Mer later that day.

Another sweep followed from 7 to 13 November to the west of Cape Verde; the ships found four Germans aboard a Belgian passenger liner and took them prisoner.

Other warships arrived in Dakar on 21 November to relieve Strasbourg; she left that day along with the cruiser Algérie and an escort of torpedo boats.

The French had received faulty intelligence that had indicated that the Germans would attempt to force a group of battleships through the Strait of Gibraltar to strengthen the Italian fleet.

Strasbourg, at that time commanded by Capitaine de vaisseau (Ship of the line captain) Collinet, was the first large warship to slip her mooring, following four destroyers on their way out of the harbor.

The French ships steered for a gap in the defensive minefield to bring themselves under the protection of a battery of 240 mm (9.4 in) coastal guns on Cape Canastel.

Strasbourg was still belching thick, black smoke, the result of damage to one of her air intakes from fragments of the jetty; the problem could only be corrected by shutting down boiler room No.

Under strict radio silence to prevent Somerville from discovering his intentions, Collinet waited until Strasbourg was some 60 nmi (110 km; 69 mi) from San Pietro Island off the coast of Sardinia at 10:00 on 4 July before turning northwest to Toulon.

[30] On 6 July, the French naval command ordered Gensoul to return to Toulon; he arrived and raised his flag aboard Strasbourg later that day.

Strasbourg was assigned to the 3rd Squadron and on 14 August she was taken into the shipyard in Toulon to have screens installed to protect the anti-aircraft gun crews.

Provence was escorted by a group of five destroyers, and the two units met off the Balearic Islands and arrived back in Toulon on 8 November.

Training operations were limited to two per month, and the cruisers and destroyers had to alternate between periods of active service and reserve status with skeleton crews.

[32] Following Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa on 8 November 1942, Germany launched Case Anton in retaliation, moving to seize all of the so-called "Zone libre", the part of Vichy France that had up to that point remained unoccupied.

Early on 27 November, elements of the German 7th Panzer Division approached the city with the intention of seizing the ships of the Forces de haute mer.

Strasbourg appeared to be undamaged, leading to confusion among the German officers, but the ship's seacocks had been opened and she was in the process of sinking to the harbor bottom.

At 06:20, de Laborde ordered the sabotage team aboard Strasbourg to detonate the scuttling charges that would destroy the ship and prevent her from being simply sealed and re-floated.

She was heavily bombed and sunk by US forces—including the battleship USS Nevada on 18 August, three days after Operation Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France.

She was raised for the second time on 1 October 1944 but found to be beyond repair, and used as a testbed for underwater explosions until condemned and renamed Q45 on 22 March 1955, to be sold for scrapping on 27 May that year.