Polycratic bureaucracy made Bismarck inefficient

Was the Bismarck class massively over-engineered compared with the King George V class, and why?

They were inefficiently engineered because competing bureaucratic centers imposed their own priorities on the design.

Polycratic describes a system with many formal and informal centers of power. Such structures can protect a totalitarian ruler by making subordinates compete with one another instead of combining against the leadership. The same competition rewards officials for making rivals look bad rather than improving the shared result. In warship procurement, each office can protect its preferred feature while no authority disciplines the aggregate design. The Bismarck class shows how individually sophisticated components can produce an inefficient ship when responsibility is fragmented.