Who Started World War II?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Fahnenbohn

It's true, I was stupid to laugh at that, I have not experienced these tragic events. But in military terms, this is a historical fact that the Royal Navy had not suffered so much competition since a lot of time !

Jutland
Raid on the Medway
Battle of Beachy Head
Battle of Chesapeake Bay
Battle of the Coronel

About Graf Spee and Bismarck events : how could it be otherwise ? The british navy was far superior to the german navy. A frontal fight was not in favour of Germans.

KMS Bismarck - Commissioned 1940
KMS Prinz Eugen - Commissioned 1940

HMS Hood - Commissioned 1920
HMS Prince of Wales - Commissioned 1941

See the problem here? The Hood, although one of the loved ships of the Royal Navy, was an old Battlecruiser, really not designed to take on something like the Bismarck. The more equal opponent to the Bismarck would be the King George V.
Yes, the Bismarck did inflict a nasty shock to a navy which was almost arrogant in its confidence in its superiority, but it wasn't the only one. The uboat campaign was another nasty shock, as were Japanese aircraft.
In return, well, let's remember what crippled the Bismarck, a very slow, very outdated biplane. So slow, in fact, that the fire control of the AAA systems on the Bismarck didn't have a target speed selector that went low enough.

The Tirpitz acted well as a threat, just as Argentinas submarines acted well as a threat towards the Falklands fleet, but there was no way for Germany to carry out that threat, but of course, Britain did not know that and so expended resources to eliminate the threat.

In my opinion, the Kriegsmarine surface fleet was mostly a waste of time and resources that could have been spent improving and expanding the uboatwaffe, but then I'm a bit of Doenitz fan so I would go for the 300 uboats over Plan Z. Of course, fortunately for Great Britain, such a plan was not feasible.
http://uboat.net/forums/read.php?3,285,554