Kaiserliche Marine - World War I

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.