ABSTRACT
The Great War, as we have seen, caught the German Navy woefully off-balance and unprepared. Three ships of the König class were still under construction in August 1914, and joined the fleet by November as König, Markgraf and Kronprinz, thereby giving Germany seventeen Dreadnoughts in commission. The picture was even bleaker with regard to battle-cruisers. Only three vessels of this type, Moltke, Von der Tann and Seydlitz, were available in home waters; the fourth, Goeben, was irretrievably lost in the Mediterranean. Three ships of the Derfflinger class were also being built: Derfflinger joined the fleet in September 1914, Lützow in August 1915, and Hindenburg in May 1917. Moreover, only four armoured cruisers were available for duty in the North Sea (Blücher, Prinz Adalbert, Roon, and Yorck), while two others (Gneisenau and Scharnhorst) were overseas. Of the full fleet strength of 41 battleships and 12 battle-cruisers envisaged under the Novelle of 1912, only 17 Dreadnoughts and 3 battle-cruisers were available against the Royal Navy by the end of 1914.
