Kessler returned to ship duty and served as a torpedo boat commander before completing a world cruise aboard the cruiser SMS Hamburg between 1925 and 1927.

Kessler became the head of the Navy Air Service upon his return to Germany and attended the German Naval Academy at Mürwik.

[1] He served as German Naval Attaché to the disarmament conference in Geneva, where he claimed to have befriended US Secretary of State Henry L.

Because Kessler did not believe that Germany could easily win a war against the British, he got into a dispute with Göring, who removed him from consideration for the assignment in England.

On the voyage, according to Fehler, relations between Kessler and a convinced Nazi passenger, naval judge Kay Nieschling, became very strained.