Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were operating toward the North Atlantic to threaten trade and convoys. Accounts differ over the sortie's immediate purpose. One possibility discussed here is that they helped cover Deutschland's return before taking a route wide around the United Kingdom and moving south against Atlantic shipping. The sortie came during the unsettled opening months of the war, when reserve crews were still working up and scarce heavy ships already had many commitments. Their danger lay in their firepower and in how few immediately available British ships could reliably oppose them.
Notable Point · 34:53-36:08
Why Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were a serious early-war threat
The two German capital ships could have disrupted Atlantic trade because the Royal Navy's battleships and crews were already tied to competing wartime demands.