Talk:Plan Z

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This page needs serious updating; in fact it does not even get to the actual "Z-Plan" of 1938/39. The German version is far more detailed and should be used to bring the English version up to standard.Cosal 02:32, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean Up

I don’t mean to sound rude, but this page is truly in need of drastic clean-up. The statement "Plan Z was the name given to the planned re-equipment and expansion of the Nazi German Navy (Kriegsmarine) from 1935 onwards” is totally dead wrong. Plan Z did not to the build-up of the Kriegsmarine from 1935 at all. Plan Z refers to a plan approved by Hitler on January 29, 1939 for a massive build-up of the Kriegsmarine to be completed by 1944. Because World War Two broke out in September 1939, the plan had to be abandoned, and even the war had not occurred, it seems unlikely that the plan was feasible given that the plan called for a massive battle fleet to be built in five years time that without making any corresponding cuts to the budgets of the Army and the Air Force. Economic historians are unanimous that in 1939 Germany did not possess sufficient quantities of money, raw materials or skilled workers to be build the huge fleet envisioned in the plan, so the Plan was not very realistic at all. Even Admiral Erich Raeder, a man who was quite happy at having his service moved from third to first in terms of funding priorities protested that it would not be possible to build such a fleet in five years time.

However, the real significance is that Hitler gave the Kriegsmarine for the first and only time in the existence of the Third Reich first priority on allocation of raw materials, skilled workers and money; previously the Kriegsmarine had been third in priorities. The importance of this is an it a sign of how serious Adolf Hitler was in his anti-British policy that started after the Munich Conference. Hitler had began his foreign policy in 1933 with the hope of making Britain his ally, but by late 1938 he had turn an complete U-turn, and was now determined to destroy Britain as a power. Contrary to popular opinion, Hitler saw the Munich Agreement as a terrible diplomatic defeat inflicted on him by Neville Chamberlain as it “cheated” him of the war he was so desperate to have against Czechoslovakia in 1938. The Z Plan was a sign of how serious Hitler was in his anti-British course by early 1939, and I think the article should focus on that aspect of Z Plan, for that is the real importance of the otherwise ephemeral plan. A really good, if extremely dry source for the information about the Z Plan are the chapters on foreign policy and the Navy in Volume 1 of Germany and the Second World War edited by Wilhelm Deist, Hans-Erich Vokmann, Manfred Messerschmidt & Wolfram Wette, Clarednon Press: Oxford, United Kingdom, 1990, which is the offical German history of World War Two. Moreover, a historiography section is needed to discuss how the Z Plan fits into the Globalist- Continentalist debate. The Globalists (those historians who believe Hitler aimed at world conquest) like Andreas Hillgruber and Klaus Hildebrand have used the Z Plan as evidence of Hitler’s desire to conquer the world. The Continentalists (those historians who believe Hitler aimed at the conquest of Europe) like Ian Kershaw argue that the Z Plan was an improvised measure forced on Hitler by Britain’s refusal either to become Hitler’s ally or stand aside from the Continent, and was not a sign of Hitler's intention to conquer the world. --A.S. Brown (talk) 22:54, 30 May 2008 (UTC)