Der Adler, der Wolf, und die Sonne: Die Geschichte des Stahlpakts
(The Eagle, the Wolf, and the Sun: The History of the Pact of Steel)
For the first time, a thorough research project with the support of the National Archives of Germany, Great Britai...
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Board of the NIACC in 1922. The men that made up the board would deal with Germans who, while treading carefully just at the lines, would never legally cross them, making their jobs almost impossible to enforce.
The Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control, or NIACC, initially restricted development of German naval forces in the interbellum period. The NIACC wanted any development of naval arms to be along the lines of the Scandinavian coastal monitors and not towards mighty vessels that might have been able to bring the Allies to their knees. Germany, caught in the hyperinflationary loop and economic problems, was not in any position to do anything about her surface fleet. By the late twenties, however, the situation was reversed and rearmament was more or less an open secret. The commissioning of the light cruiser Emden, Germany's first post-war large naval construction was quickly followed by the commissioning of sixteen 1934/A-class destroyers to replace destroyers left over from the Great War. These vessels were largely unsuitable for fleet operations, even the new Emden was by-and-large a training ship. The Reichsmarine organized the destroyers into three destroyer squadrons, but a large policy argument broke out in the Reichsmarine.
On one side, the traditionalists wanted to recapture some of the--largely manufactured--glory of the Kaiserliche Marine: the fleet that had fought the British to a draw at Jutland and Helgoland Bight. A newer and growing chorus, however, wanted to play to German strengths. They argued passionately for what had actually worked in the past: kreuzerkrieg, or cruiser warfare. With surface raiders designed to draw off some of the British Home Fleet and submarines conducting long-range unrestricted submarine warfare, those captains argued that they would be of more use to the Fatherland than battleships that served no purpose other than to sit at anchor in Wilhelmshaven.
This argument persuaded Admiral Raeder, chief of the Reichsmarine. Though he didn't necessarily want to sacrifice his battleships, he did convince the Weimar to spring for three light cruisers of the Karlsruhe-class and later a pair of the evolved Leipzig-class together with six more of the 1934/A destroyers. The Karlsruhe-class were more heavily armed and armored than the Emden, these were the first modern surface combatants of the budding Reichsmarine. Together with the approval from the NIACC for their over-armed heavy cruisers of the Deutschland-class, these would form the nascent core of the long arm of the cruiser fleet. The three vessels--officially called panzerschiff by the Reichsmarine but labelled "pocket battleships" by the British press--had developed German experience in the construction of large surface combatants. These ships had been developed with a similar eye to British "light battlecruisers" from the Great War, better known in the British press as "Fisher's Follies," referring to the former First Sea Lord's rather bizarre ships. The Courageous-class were very fast, with a shallow draught, and had mounted four 15"/381mm in two twin turrets as their main armament. Though the British versions had been intended to operate as scouts for the Grand Fleet, the Germans were more interested in the ability of long-duration, fast, heavily armed ships which could either out-shoot or out-run opponents as needed. To escort such ships--which would be operating far from home and thus need long legs themselves--the plan necessitated a turn away from destroyers in favor of longer-endurance light cruisers.
