Why Germany kept building eleven-inch naval guns

The eleven-inch armament sustained Germany's heavy naval-gun industry after the First World War. In this interpretation, the Deutschland programme preserved a base from which larger weapons could later be developed. Without that continuity, the Scharnhorst-class guns and the research feeding the later fifteen-inch programme would have started from a much weaker position. Interrupting heavy-gun production would therefore have delayed the return to battleship construction, because the larger weapons would require a new development programme.