Plan Z and the revival of risk-fleet strategy

Raeder's January 1939 Plan Z revived Tirpitz's risk-fleet logic for a future conflict with Britain. It assumed that a dangerous German fleet could deter Britain and might make Germany an attractive ally in a hypothetical Anglo-American war. This theory had failed before the First World War, and by the 1930s an Anglo-American war was no longer a serious expectation. The intended 1948 force included ten battleships, four carriers, fifteen Panzerschiffe, five heavy cruisers, forty-four light cruisers, sixty-eight destroyers, and 249 U-boats. Sustained German construction on that scale would likely have provoked a major British counter-programme during the same years. By January 1939, Germany had completed only three Panzerschiffe and two Scharnhorst-class ships relative to Raeder's earlier programme. The 1932 plan was still less than one-third complete, which made the much larger nine-year programme implausible.