List of battleships of Germany

To defend its North and Baltic Sea coasts in wartime, Germany had previously built a series of smaller ironclad warships, including coastal defense ships, and armored frigates.

[a][1] With the accession to the throne of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1888, the Kaiserliche Marine began a program of naval expansion befitting a Great Power.

[3] The appointment of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz to the post of State Secretary of the Navy in 1897 accelerated naval construction.

[6] The launch of the "all-big-gun" HMS Dreadnought in 1906 revolutionized battleship construction, and forced Tirpitz to radically alter his shipbuilding plan.

[7] In order to remain in the battleship race, Tirpitz secured the funds for the first four German dreadnoughts, the Nassau class, which were laid down beginning in June 1907.

[11] Germany's defeat in 1918 resulted in the internment of the majority of the High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow; the ships were eventually scuttled on 21 June 1919 to prevent them from being seized by the British Royal Navy.

[12] Of the ten battleships interned, only one, Baden, was prevented from sinking; she was later expended as a gunnery target by the Royal Navy.

[19] Further design studies were drawn up, culminating in the massive H-44 class, but they were not serious proposals due to the infeasibility and expense of the ships.

Of the four ships, Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm and Weissenburg were more advanced, in that their armor was composed of higher quality steel.

[25] During the reconstruction the superstructure was cut down, a second conning tower was added, and the steam boilers were replaced with newer models.

[26] Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm and Weissenburg were sold to the Ottoman Empire in 1910 and renamed Barbaros Hayreddin and Turgut Reis, respectively.

[21][26] The five Kaiser Friedrich III-class ships set the standard for later German pre-dreadnought battleships: they carried smaller main guns than their foreign contemporaries, but a heavier secondary battery.

[31] The ships of the class, which included Wittelsbach, Wettin, Zähringen, Schwaben, and Mecklenburg, were the first battleships built under the first Naval Law of 1898.

A 63 m (207 ft) long section of Preussen was retained for use as an explosives target; it was eventually bombed and sunk in April 1945.

[31] Hessen was converted into a radio-controlled target ship in 1935 and served in that capacity until the end of World War II in 1945.

[46] Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz insisted on their construction as larger ships would have necessitated widening the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal; this would have put an enormous strain on the naval budget for the year.

Early on the second day of the battle, Pommern was sunk by a single torpedo that triggered an ammunition magazine explosion.

[52] Two of the ships, Nassau and Posen, took part in the inconclusive Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1915, during which they engaged the Russian pre-dreadnought Slava.

[53] The four Nassau-class ships took part in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May and 1 June 1916; they suffered only a handful of secondary battery hits and limited casualties.

After the German fleet at Scapa Flow were scuttled, the four Helgolands were ceded as war reparations to the victorious Allied powers in the sunken ships' stead.

It was determined that U-boats were more valuable to the war effort, and so work on new battleships was slowed and ultimately stopped altogether.

Bayern was assigned to the naval force that drove the Imperial Russian Navy from the Gulf of Riga during Operation Albion in October 1917, though the ship was severely damaged from a mine and had to be withdrawn to Kiel for repairs.

[72] Bayern was successfully scuttled on 21 July 1919, but British guards managed to beach Baden to prevent her from sinking.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau operated together for much of the early portion of World War II, including sorties into the Atlantic to raid British merchant shipping.

In early 1943, Scharnhorst joined the Bismarck-class battleship Tirpitz in Norway to interdict Allied convoys to the Soviet Union.

Scharnhorst and several destroyers sortied from Norway to attack a convoy; the Germans were instead intercepted by British naval patrols.

During the Battle of North Cape, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Duke of York sank Scharnhorst.

[76] Bismarck and Tirpitz were the last and largest battleships completed by the German navy, as well as the heaviest ever built in Europe.

Bismarck was deployed in May 1941 to raid British shipping in the Atlantic Ocean along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.

In November 1944, RAF Lancaster bombers hit the ship three times with 12,000 lb (5,400 kg) bombs, which caused her to capsize and sink.