The European and American comparison returns each logistical weakness to a strategic and political cause. American legislators preferred combat power to the support tail. France struggled to settle what it wanted its navy to do, Italy lacked the depth to exploit its fleet, and Soviet organisational development had been damaged from within. Germany's Plan Z imagined battleships, battlecruisers, Panzerschiffe, aircraft carriers, and dry docks without a sustainable force-projection supply system. The political case for that support capacity would have been hard to make before the combat fleet existed. Logistics followed national priorities as much as naval technical ability.
Notable Point · 1:03:12-1:06:14
National strategy sets each navy's logistical ceiling
Political choices left each major navy with a different logistical ceiling, from congressional resistance in the United States to the unsupported ambitions of Plan Z.