The year 1942, beginning with Hitler's order that the surface fleet should be concentrated in Norway, ended with an event which led him to order its immediate dissolution. There were transitions more serious than this in that year which saw the turning of the tide. The Japanese offensive faltered and was stopped; Rommel was halted, and forced back from Alamein; the Allies began their series of major offensives with the landings in North-West Africa; the U-boats reached and passed the peak of their successes, entering the decline from which they never recovered. But nothing is more illustrative of the shift that was taking place than the relatively insignificant question of the German Fleet; for that question throws a clearer light on Hitler's state of mind than these more important developments.

The German surface fleet, so small at the beginning of the War, had escaped Hitler's attention for the first two years. Until he developed his fear for Norway in the autumn of 1941, he had left Raeder quite free to make the best possible use of the few ships at his disposal; and Raeder had used them to good effect. The completion of the few ships under construction was frequently delayed; some of Hitler's remarks had suggested that, in a crisis, his attitude to the surface fleet would be hostile. On 16 September 1939 he had confessed that ‘the Bismarck, the Tirpitz and the two heavy cruisers will not yield very much’. On 10 October 1939 he had wondered if it was ‘really necessary’ to complete the Graf Zeppelin, Germany's only aircraft-carrier. But the delay in completing the ships on the stocks was never a bone of contention, and there was no crisis affecting the fleet before the end of 1942. After the loss of the Graf Spee in 1939 there were, it is true, mutterings from Hitler. After the loss of the Bismarck on 27 May 1941 he reacted in the same way, wondering, on 6 June, why the ship ‘did not rely on her fighting strength and attack the Prince of Wales in order to destroy her after the Hood had been sunk’.