World War I
By the start of the First World War, the German Imperial Navy possessed 22 pre-Dreadnoughts, 19 dreadnought battleships and 7 battle-cruisers.
Admiral von Tirpitz became the commander of the Navy. The main fighting forces of the navy were to become the High Seas Fleet, and the U-boat fleet. Smaller fleets were deployed to the German overseas protectorates, the most prominent being assigned to the East Asia Station at Tsingtao.
The German Navy's U-boats were also instrumental in the sinking of the civilian passenger liner, the RMS Lusitania on 7 May 1915, which was one of the main events that led to the USA joining the war two years later in 1917.
Read more about this topic: Imperial German Navy
Famous quotes containing the words war i, world and/or war:
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Who can wonder that the world is known
So well by man, since himself is one?
The same composure in his form is shewed,
And man’s the little image of the God.”
—Marcus Manilius (10 B.C.–A.D. 30)
“... the ... radio station played a Chopin polonaise. On all the following days news bulletins were prefaced by Chopin—preludes, etudes, waltzes, mazurkas. The war became for me a victory, known in advance, Chopin over Hitler.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)