German cruiser policy divides into three strands that should not be confused. The theoretical cruiser could perform every mission without suffering the tradeoffs that normally accompany an all-purpose design. Procurement plans admitted some limits but still assumed that refits and scheduling could make a small number of ships cover many roles. Operational reality was the set of ships actually completed, crewed, supplied, and ready when war arrived. This framework gives the rest of the lecture a practical test: stated capability matters only when the fleet can generate it at the required time.
Notable Point · 21:02-22:29
Theory, procurement, and reality as three different fleets
The all-purpose cruiser imagined by doctrine differed from the compromised force placed in procurement plans and the much smaller fleet actually available for war.