ABSTRACT
Like many studies on aspects of German and European history in the period between the end of World War I and the disaster of 1945, an analysis of the long-term objectives formulated by the German naval leaders 1 corroborates the precise – though shortened – thesis by Fritz Fischer that, in the end, it was the non-acceptance of the defeat suffered in 1918 that led to the disaster of World War II. 2 One could even say that the Navy surpassed most of the other conservative elites in Germany in not only working for a revision of the results of the war but also in fostering the will to repeat the attempt 3 which had failed in World War I: to secure the position of a world power for the German Reich 4
