Talk:Plan Z

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This page needs serious updating; in fact it does not even get to the actual "Z-Plan" of 1938/39. The German version is far more detailed and should be used to bring the English version up to standard.Cosal 02:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Clean Up

I don’t mean to sound rude, but this page is truly in need of drastic clean-up. The statement "Plan Z was the name given to the planned re-equipment and expansion of the Nazi German Navy (Kriegsmarine) from 1935 onwards” is totally dead wrong. Plan Z did not to the build-up of the Kriegsmarine from 1935 at all. Plan Z refers to a plan approved by Hitler on January 29, 1939 for a massive build-up of the Kriegsmarine to be completed by 1944. Because World War Two broke out in September 1939, the plan had to be abandoned, and even the war had not occurred, it seems unlikely that the plan was feasible given that the plan called for a massive battle fleet to be built in five years time that without making any corresponding cuts to the budgets of the Army and the Air Force. Economic historians are unanimous that in 1939 Germany did not possess sufficient quantities of money, raw materials or skilled workers to build the huge fleet envisioned in the plan, so the Plan was not very realistic at all. Even Admiral Erich Raeder, a man who was quite happy at having his service moved from third to first in terms of funding priorities protested that it would not be possible to build such a fleet in five years time.

However, the real significance is that Hitler gave the Kriegsmarine for the first and only time in the existence of the Third Reich first priority on allocation of raw materials, skilled workers and money; previously the Kriegsmarine had been third in priorities. The importance of this is an it a sign of how serious Adolf Hitler was in his anti-British policy that started after the Munich Conference. Hitler had began his foreign policy in 1933 with the hope of making Britain his ally, but by late 1938 he had turn an complete U-turn, and was now determined to destroy Britain as a power. Contrary to popular opinion, Hitler saw the Munich Agreement as a terrible diplomatic defeat inflicted on him by Neville Chamberlain as it “cheated” him of the war he was so desperate to have against Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Z Plan was a sign of how serious Hitler was in his anti-British course by early 1939, and I think the article should focus on that aspect of Z Plan, for that is the real importance of the otherwise ephemeral plan. A really good, if extremely dry source for the information about the Z Plan are the chapters on foreign policy and the Navy in Volume 1 of Germany and the Second World War edited by Wilhelm Deist, Hans-Erich Vokmann, Manfred Messerschmidt & Wolfram Wette, Clarednon Press: Oxford, United Kingdom, 1990, which is the offical German history of World War Two. Moreover, a historiography section is needed to discuss how the Z Plan fits into the Globalist- Continentalist debate. The Globalists (those historians who believe Hitler aimed at world conquest) like Andreas Hillgruber and Klaus Hildebrand have used the Z Plan as evidence of Hitler’s desire to conquer the world. The Continentalists (those historians who believe Hitler aimed at the conquest of Europe) like Ian Kershaw argue that the Z Plan was an improvised measure forced on Hitler by Britain’s refusal either to become Hitler’s ally or stand aside from the Continent, and was not a sign of Hitler's intention to conquer the world. --A.S. Brown (talk) 22:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Plans X and Y

I recall a visit to a college library a few years ago, where I found a book that said that Plan Z was the third version of a plan for a greatly expanded German navy, and that it was a more moderate version than earlier proposals. According to the book, these were known as Plan X and Plan Y, if I recall correctly. Does anyone remember reading anything similar? I'll also see if I can't track down that book again. If I'm correct on the particulars, then this should go into the article as well. Sacxpert (talk) 03:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

comment repeated from Bis article - I kicked this around on a different board where the consensus is "there seems to be no real documentation, in English sources, of a detailed plan earlier than the Z plan, although presumably the earlier ships were designed to fill some strategic vision." So, if you can find that book then you will be doing us all a favour. Greg Locock (talk) 01:46, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

[outdented reply] I went looking for the book today, and found it. I'll copy the text verbatim from the relevant pages. Citation: Gray, Edwyn. Hitler's Battleships. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999. pp. 26-27.

[Hitler instructed] Raeder to go away and prepare plans for an immediate increase in warship construction.

It was not, of course, as easy as that. There were many matters to be discussed and considered before any building could begin: whether, for example, to produce a balanced fleet capable of meeting the Royal Navy on equal terms in conventional battle, or to construct a force of heavy surface ships to launch an all-out attack on Britain’s seaborne commerce, or, perhaps, to concentrate all available resources on a U-boat war. Raeder left the problem to others. He set up a committee under Vice-Admiral Gunther Gruse to consider the options and ordered his youngest staff officer, Command Hellmuth Heye, to prepare a plan for waging a successful war against the British Empire. The he sat back and awaited results, content that time was on his side, for the Fuehrer had assured him that the new fleet would not be needed before 1946.

The preliminary groundwork was completed in September and the committee met on the 23rd to consider the first proposal -- or Plan X -- which comprised an exhaustive schedule of all the ships and logistical facilities needed to make up a balanced fleet. Rear-Admiral Werner Fuchs, the Chief of Naval Construction, hastily poured cold water over the idea by pointing out that the massive numbers envisaged were utterly beyond the capability of Germany’s shipbuilding industry. Heye, too, opposed the scheme but for a different reason. He argued that any future Battle of Jutland was unlikely to improve Germany’s strategic situation and that, in any event, the prospects for achieving success against Britain with a conventional battle fleet were virtually zero. Heye’s conclusion did not please the senior admirals. To expand the navy without building newer and more powerful battleships was tantamount to an act of sacrilege and the younger Commander was told to think again.

A second exercise, Plan Y, was considered and rejected and, in October, Heye produced two alternative Z plans each of which was based on a sustained attack on Britain’s oceanic trading routes. One version -- which enjoyed the twin advantages of being both cheap and quick to implement -- proposed a joint operation using pocket-battleships, U-boats, and surface raiders. The other visualized a hard-hitting and fast surface fleet designed to carry out raiding operations against convoys in the Atlantic and merchant shipping anywhere in the world. And as such a fleet must be able to fight its way through the British blockade, it followed that it must consist of the largest and most powerful battleships that Germany could design and build.

The two alternative Z plans were submitted to Raeder on 31 October and, the following day, he placed them before Hitler. The Fuehrer had always favoured battledships…. And as a battle-cruiser veteran of the High Seas Fleet Raeder naturally had no hesitation in recommending the alternative big-ship version of the plan. Having repeated his earlier assurance that war with Britain was impossible before 1946, Hitler accepted and approved Raeder’s recommendation. There was, he pointed out, adequate time to build the proposed ships.

Sorry about the length, but I wanted to let the text speak for itself. I'm not exactly clear on the sources Gray used for this, since his book is something of a layman's history, with no footnotes or endnotes. There is a listed biography at the end of the text, which I can append to this if anyone wants to look into the background information. It would be quite interesting, I'm sure. There must be documentary coverage of Heye's various plans, and even though it seems that Plan X was never particularly serious, its specifications would be fascinating to examine.

One other note: the article as written talks about four aircraft carriers, but links it to Graf Zeppelin. As far as I know, only the Graf and the Peter Strasser were to be completed to that design, with the other two being of a different design. Perhaps they were to be the conversions of the liners Seydlitz, Potsdam, and Gneisenau, but I'm not sure on that point. I changed that line. Sacxpert (talk)

• • If anyone is interested in Heye's plans, there is a good discussion of Heye and his role in the German policy progress in The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, 1933-39, Macmillan Press: London, 1998, ISBN 0-312-21456-1 by Joseph Maiolo, which talks quite a bit about the genesis of the Z Plan. --A.S. Brown (talk) 22:48, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Just a few comments and suggestions for sources

Quite frankly, this page and the German one is extremely misleading and spouts out a bunch of garbage with no substantiating evidence. Forty-four light cruisers? The most I've been able to find in books *in German written by German historians* about the subject say that there would've been 18 total light cruisers. I got all of my sources from this forum: http://forum.axishistory.com/viewforum.php?f=61. That forum has book scans, ISBNs, lots of suggested readings, and every claim in there is cited. "Overy, p. 50" is not a reference, because that tells me nothing about where the information came from. The book 'Der Z-plan Streben zur Weltmachtflotte' by Siefried Breyer, ISBN 3790905593 claims that the the German surface fleet, minus the two old pre-dreadnoughts and existing destroyers, would have been this upon completion:

• 6 H-class Battleships
• 3 O-class Battleships/Battlecruisers (depends on how you classify them, and varies by source)
• 2 Bismarck-class Battleships
• 2 Scharnhorst-class Battleships/Battlecruisers
• 2 Graf Zeppelin-class Aircraft Carriers
• 2 unknown-class Aircraft Carriers (since design work was never started, the class was never named; every book I've read simply says "2 other carriers")
• 12 P-class Pocket Battleships (fancy name for heavy cruisers with very large guns)
• 3 Deutschland-class Pocket Battleships
• 5 Admiral Hipper-class Heavy Cruisers
• 12 M-class light cruisers
• 3 K-class light cruisers
• 1 Emden-class light cruiser
• 1 Leipzig-class light cruiser
• 1 Nürnberg-class light cruiser
• 22 Spähkreuzer-class heavy destroyers

In addition, a new harbor on Rügen Island, called Rügenhafen, was to be built to accommodate the new fleet.

Now, I just created an account to point out that this article sucks. If no one wants to change it so it's accurate instead of blatant crap, then I can change it so the information presented matches the historical information as found and compiled by actual historians. A lot of people rely on this site as a source of information, and it bothers me to see an article that is so wrong and filled with false information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBromgrev (talk • contribs) 16:30, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Plan Z/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

F. This page is seriously inaccurate. Calls the Z Plan the name for the build-up of the German Navy from 1935 when in fact the Z Plan was a name for the expansion of the German Navy unveiled in 1939. Does not discuss at all the importance in terms of foreign policy that the shift in moving the Kriegsmarine from third to first in terms of economic priorities in regards to the allocating raw materials, skilled workers or money. No mention of where the Z Plan figures in historiographical debates about German foreign policy. At present, a truly bad page in need of drastic clean-up. --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 23:02, 30 May 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 03:06, 30 April 2016 (UTC)