Z4 Richard Beitzen was in reserve during the Norwegian Campaign of early 1940 and was transferred to France later that year, where she made several attacks on British shipping.

The ship returned to Germany in early 1941 for a refit and was transferred to Norway in June as part of the preparations for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Z4 Richard Beitzen spent some time at the beginning of the campaign conducting anti-shipping patrols in Soviet waters but these were generally fruitless.

Design work on the Type 34 destroyers began in 1932, around the time that Weimar Germany renounced the armament limitations of the Versailles Treaty which had ended World War I.

The design work appears to have been rushed and not well-thought out as the short forecastle and lack of flare at the bow compromised the ships' seakeeping ability[1] and their stability was inadequate.

[2] The only real innovative part of the design, the high-pressure water-tube boilers, were an over-complicated system that received almost no shipboard testing before being installed in the Type 34s, and frequently broke down throughout the life of the ships.

[11] After being completed, Z4 Richard Beitzen made a port visit to Ulvik, Norway, in April 1938, together with her sister ships Z2 Georg Thiele and Z3 Max Schultz.

Zerstörer-Flottille) and in December, Z4 Richard Beitzen, together with her sisters Z1 Leberecht Maass, Z2 Georg Thiele and Z3 Max Schultz, sailed to an area off the coast of Iceland to evaluate their seaworthiness in a North Atlantic winter with their new bows.

[13] When World War II began in September 1939, Z4 Richard Beitzen was initially deployed in the western Baltic to enforce a blockade of Poland, but she was soon transferred to the Kattegat to inspect neutral shipping for contraband goods, beginning in mid-September as one turbine was not operational.

Despite their escort, the submarine HMS Ursula managed to sneak inside the anti-submarine screen and fired a salvo of six torpedoes at Leipzig in the Elbe estuary the following day.

Ihn had problems with her boilers that reduced her maximum speed to 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph) and she had to be escorted back to Germany by Z4 Richard Beitzen.

Z3 Max Schultz, Z4 Richard Beitzen and Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt laid 110 magnetic mines in the Shipwash area, off Harwich, on 9/10 February 1940 which sank six ships of 28,496 GRT and damaged another.

[21] On 22 February 1940, Z4 Richard Beitzen and the destroyers, Z3 Max Schultz, Z1 Leberecht Maass, Z6 Theodor Riedel, Z13 Erich Koellner and Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt, sailed for the Dogger Bank to intercept British fishing vessels in Operation Wikinger.

On the night of 24/25 November, Z4 Richard Beitzen, Z10 Hans Lody and Z20 Karl Galster sortied from Brest, bound for the Land's End area.

Zerstörer-Flottille), she participated in a sortie on 12–13 July that sank two small Soviet ships, at the cost of expending 80 percent of her flotilla's ammunition.

She was damaged by shock from near-misses by shore artillery during another sortie on 9 August, during which the Germans sank a converted fishing trawler (the Tuman), and departed for Germany for repairs five days later.

[26] Z4 Richard Beitzen, together with the rest of the 5th Zerstörer Flotille, sailed from Kiel on 24 January for France as part of the preparations for the Channel Dash.

Z4 Richard Beitzen helped to repel an attack by five British destroyers and was damaged by a near-miss from a Bristol Blenheim bomber that she shot down with her newly installed 2 cm Flakvierling.

Heavy weather forced Z4 Richard Beitzen and two other destroyers to return to port before reaching Trondheim and Prinz Eugen was badly damaged by a British submarine after their separation.

After it was completed, she was part of the screen for the heavy cruiser Lützow to Bogen Bay, Norway and laid a minefield in the Skaggerak en route.

While en route to the rendezvous at the Altafjord, Lützow and three destroyers ran aground, forcing the entire group to abandon the operation.

[13] During Operation Wunderland in August, Z4 Richard Beitzen, Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt and Z15 Erich Steinbrinck escorted Admiral Scheer at the beginning and end of its mission to attack Soviet shipping in the Kara Sea.

[30] On 13–15 October, Z4 Richard Beitzen, Z16 Friedrich Eckoldt and the destroyers Z27 and Z30 laid a minefield off the Kanin Peninsula at the mouth of the White Sea that sank the Soviet icebreaker Mikoyan.

Three weeks later, the same four destroyers escorted Admiral Hipper as she attempted to intercept Allied merchant ships proceeding independently to Soviet ports in early November.

The destroyer HMS Obdurate spotted them in turn and closed to investigate when the German ships opened fire at a range of 8,000 meters (8,700 yd).

This took some time in the poor visibility and Hipper was surprised in the meantime by the British covering force of the light cruisers Sheffield and Jamaica.

The ship was badly damaged by radar-equipped bombers while screening a convoy on the morning of 24 April and put into Oslo, Norway, for repairs that were not completed before the end of the war.