The conventional anti-British concept of operations

Plan Z evolved over time rather than existing as a single fixed document. The conventional account says Hitler wanted a navy dangerous enough to force Britain into alliance, reviving the logic associated with Tirpitz before the First World War. Its operational form would use two task forces, each built around three H-class battleships and a carrier, while battlecruisers and U-boats dispersed British attention. The failed precedent makes this explanation doubtful as the program's genuine intellectual basis, although German leaders may still have used the rhetoric.