The hypothetical operation was supposed to force the US to bargain from a weak position and to sever its growing economic and political connections in the Pacific Ocean, the Caribbean, and South America so that German influence could increase there.

The first plan was made in the winter of 1897–1898, by Lieutenant Eberhard von Mantey [de], and targeted mainly American naval bases in Hampton Roads to reduce and constrain the US Navy and threaten Washington, D.C.

The Harbor Defenses of New York, von Mantey thought, were too strong, with forts holding powerful anti-ship guns, to be considered a prime target.

[12] The Kaiser found funding to be difficult for the expensive ships he wished for, and plans were delayed or shelved for the long-range armored cruisers necessary for supporting the fleet in a major engagement.

By August, US ground and naval forces had gained control of Puerto Rico,[13] and a soon-to-be independent Cuba came under American economic influence.

Some 60 warships and a massive train of 40 to 60 cargo and troopships carrying 75,000 short tons (68,000 t) of coal, 100,000 soldiers and a large amount of army artillery would cross the Atlantic in 25 days.

General Alfred von Schlieffen was doubtful of the whole venture; he reported to the Kaiser that 100,000 troops "would probably be enough" to take Boston, but that many more would be required to take New York, a city of three million.

[3] By this time German officers had published what W. T. Stead called in 1901 "various fantastic schemes" for invading the United States, but contemporary observers saw them as unrealistic.

Von Rebeur-Paschwitz left Washington to scout out the proposed landing location on Cape Cod, which he found to be unsuitable because it was not within sight of friendly naval artillery support.

The hill was to be taken as quickly as possible because it was seen as useful for army-directed artillery support of the initial stages of the intended troop advance northward toward Boston some 45 miles (72 km) away.

[3] From 1902 to November 1903, naval staff officer Wilhelm von Büchsel [de] reworked the plans for Tirpitz, making small changes in tactics.

This put extra pressure on the German Navy which never reached a position of parity in the Anglo-German naval arms race nor did it expand enough to satisfy the warship and troopship numbers specified by von Mantey and then by Büchsel in the various US invasion plans.

[19] A discovery of a similar recommendation from 1900 by Diederichs for an attack upon New England, based upon a study done in March 1899, was found by German military historian Walther Hubatsch.

[21] These were copies of some German Admiralty archives found in the Public Record Office in London and described some of the 1899 and 1903 plans in general terms; discussion of them was included in the authors' 1966 book Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy: Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873–1917.

[22] The full plans were finally discovered in 1970 at the German military archives in Freiburg by Holger H. Herwig, a doctoral student at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, during his research into Wilhelm-era Germany.

[2] The first publication of a study concerning the plans occurred later in 1970 in the German journal Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen in an article co-authored by Herwig and David F. Trask, a history professor at Stony Brook.

[18] Knowledge of the plans achieved much wider dissemination with a front-page story on their discovery in The New York Times in April 1971, featuring a summary of the findings and an interview with Herwig.

Reporter Henning Seitz of Die Zeit wrote that the discovery "proves a continuity between the Kaiserreich and the Third Reich because the Nazis also wanted to risk a final fight for world domination with the United States forty years later.

"[11] The editorial staff of the American Heritage history magazine wrote a summary of the probable outcome of a notional Imperial German invasion of the US: they felt that the US under Roosevelt would not have accepted defeat or negotiated from a position of weakness.