Editing Nazi Equipment (section)

===Ships===
As a general rule, Hitler dumped most of Germany's money into the ''Heer'' (army) and ''Luftwaffe'' (air force), leaving the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) out in the cold, so to speak, so they were not overly fond of him. (Although Hitler realised he wouldn't be able to build up a navy to rival the English quickly, so he prioritised planes and tanks over ships to seize land and industrial capacity at first, which kind of made sense, at least in his delusional dreams where Great Britain wouldn't have dared to come kick him in the balls if a war was to break out.) Hitler actually liked the idea of a huge navy and authorized Plan Z in 1937, which would have built a truly massive fleet to fight the Royal Navy in about 1945, as the building up to that point was designed to fight France, and predated the Nazis' rise to power. 

Like so many of Der Fuhrer's calls, it is a controversial matter and bound to create much [[skub| Skub]]. On one hand, German submarines proved to be a deadly asset in the Atlantic, wreaking absolute goddamn havoc among the convoys directed to Britain and sinking more ships than all the Kriegsmarine's surface units combined, apparently giving credit to Admiral Dönitz's idea of winning the war through the U-Boats alone. On the other, the lack of success from the aforementioned surface fleet was almost exclusively HIS fault and his fault alone as, for starters, Hitler moved too fast with his plans of invasion like an impatient child on Christmas morning and started the war before the Kriegsmarine had enough surface units ready to deploy. Then [[What|he ordered the resources that were being poured into the construction of said ships to be directed towards other projects, including building tanks and airplanes]], ordering the construction to be halted and leaving Admiral Raeder with a severe shortage of materials and not enough ships to fight the British on equal terms or provide escorts to his capital ships (to give you an example of what a stupid idea that was, he ordered to stop working on the aircraft carrier ''Graf Zeppelin'' when it was about 85% complete, [[fail|and that could have saved a certain flagship's ass if it had been put into service]]) and then, for fear of losing the few ships he had, ordered the entire surface fleet to stay in port and not go out on sorties, and to slap the shit icing on the shit cake, he seemingly forgot all of the above and declared the surface fleet a complete failure because they weren't sinking enemy ships...without considering the fact that [[fail|HE and his orders were the reasons why his ships couldn't do anything]] (well that and because the Royal Navy would eat them alive but he didn't help).

Overall, Hitler's utter incompetence and lack of knowledge about naval warfare doomed the Kriegsmarine and left nobody happy: Dönitz ended up not having enough submarines to fight the long war and Raeder ended up with not enough ships to meet the Royal Navy head on, although the few ships that saw combat inflicted heavy blows to the enemy and left one hell of a mark in history, fighting against impossible odds and always at a disadvantage, but refusing to surrender or go down without putting up remarkable resistance. Admittedly, it's easier to speak in favor of the Kriegsmarine due to a lack of major atrocities beyond unrestricted submarine warfare (also engaged in by Allied forces) and slave labor at a low rate compared to other forces. Raeder and Dönitz were no saints; indeed, Hitler thought so highly of Dönitz that he put him in charge of Germany before he committed sudoku in Berlin. It is however fair to say that their obedience to Hitler really fucked the navy over, hard. Also Hitler liking Dönitz only made him the first name to pop up to replace Göring who had offered to surrender to the Americans on Hitler's behalf, which Martin Bormann manipulated Hitler into believing that Göring had tried to coup him so Hitler likely just named the first Marshall or Grand Admiral that he thought of. Even then, Dönitz was suppossed to only be Head of Government while Goebbels was made Head of State, though Goebbels and his wife becoming an heroes a day after the drug addicted dictator painted the floor red made that a moot point.

* '''U-Boote''': U-Boote, (short for "''Unterseeboot''" or "underwater boat") are submarines. They were used in devastating effect to cut off Britain from supplies from the outside world by having "wolfpacks" of U-boats patrol around shipping lanes and sink any enemy ship they found. Their other uses involved seeking and destroying enemy battleships, placing automated weather stations all over the world (helpful for Kriegsmarine ships) and dropping off a substantial number of spies in Britain and even America, most of which got caught and subsequently replaced by British spies (some of the ways the British bamboozled the Nazis, like the moment the Germans gave a British agent the Iron Cross are just hilarious). As a consequence of all this, they worked very well in the first years of the war, sinking huge (and I mean HUGE) numbers of ships with very few boats (only about 15 U-boats, at most, were out at sea at any given time in the first year or so). Being such an absolute pain in the arse, the British thus invested a fuckton of money and manpower into hunting and killing said U-boats, and finally got very, very good at it, through a combination of new technology, a [[Wikipedia:Western Approaches Command|massive information network]] for coordinating defenses, and [https://www.google.com/amp/s/paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/12/08/the-wargaming-wrens-of-the-western-approaches-tactical-unit/amp/ navy wargamers] [[awesome|developing new strategies to counter the U-boats]]. Right when more and more U-boats were being produced, as German high command realized their potential, the British began sinking ever more of them (Example: in all of 1941, 35 boats were lost, in 1943, 244 boats were sunk, with 41 in May alone). Admiral Karl Dönitz, a former U-boat man himself, loved the U-boats and built one of the largest structures on earth at the time to house them: the German U-boat pens in captured France. U-boats had been used in the First World War, and their campaign of sinking any ship, even those with US citizens on them (even after the German government made a very public warning to the US that boarding a ship to England was a very bad idea), that approached England led to the neutral America to join the Entente and for them to be the last straw on the German back to end it.
**'''''Type VII''''': The most common type and with 703 ships in total also the most-produced submarine model in history. Generally well regarded as a very good design, it was rather nimble for its tonnage, was able to dive extremely quickly, and could go deeper than even the designers anticipated (U-95, the famous submarine from ''Das Boot'', reportedly went as deep as 290 meters after being hit by depth charges, and even though it was quite taxing on the ship itself, the crew survived in full and made it back to port). Its major downfall (as seems to be the norm with most Nazi equipment) was that it wasn't used in its intended role; the Type VIIC submarines in particular weren't designed for long-range operations and their firepower against anything larger than a merchant vessel was negligible. They were, at best, torpedo boats that could also dive, and only the Fall of France even made it even possible for them in the first place to operate in the mid-Atlantic as they did, even though their main theater was supposed to be the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Channel. Incompetent leadership as well as the aforementioned efforts of the British in fighting them led to the Type VII becoming obsolete by 1942 and a major bleed of trained Seamen and Naval officiers. 
**'''''Type IX''''': The Type VII's bigger sister, and the actual ocean-going submarine of the Kriegsmarine. Much more spacious than the Type VII, and designed to operate as far away as the ''fucking Indian Ocean''. Quite a few of them remained a considerable threat due to their elusiveness and extreme range; multiple Type IXs made it as far as New York City and sank convoys there. As is tradition, incompetent leadership fucked this type and their crews; Dönitz was notoriously iron-fisted about keeping the Type VII wolfpacks in use and very narrow-minded as far as new technology goes. The Type IX was for the task at hand superior to its smaller cousin in every way, but materiel shortages and limited dockyards meant it was damned to take a step back behind the Type VII. 
**'''''Type XXI''''': A technological marvel that came at the very end of the war, and too late to be used by the Nazis themselves, but these babies were by far the most advanced type of submarine devised at the time. Primarily designed to operate almost entirely under water and as trials with the finished ships by the Allies after the war showed, more than capable of that. The Type XXI ''Elektroboot'' marks a significant shift in submarine doctrine across the globe, as it proved that submarines were more than capable of operating far away from a port without needing any assistance while staying almost completely invisible. The modern nuclear submarines of the US and USSR are direct decendants of the Type XXI for that very reason. Unfortunately for the Nazis and fortunately for everyone else they had serious problems in their construction as Albert Speer decided [[wat|to farm out hull construction to a steel bridge company to speed up production]] and they never scored a kill.
* '''''Gorch Fock''''': The first of a series of five ships built very early in Germany's rearmament program, when the Nazis were still uncertain what might provoke the allies.  Not in any way a warship, these were sail tallships, the last, largest, and finest ever made (although their engine systems were designed to train sailors for operating U-Boats).  After the war all the ships of the class were seized as war trophies, notably the ''Horst Wessel'' which was taken by the United States becoming the ''USCGC Eagle''. The modern day ''Gorch Fock'' of the Bundesmarine is a new ship built from the same plans in 1958 and remains a training vessel to this day. 
* '''''Deutschland Class Cruiser''''': The archetypal battlecruiser, the ''Deutschlands'' were the first new large ships designed by Germany after the Treaty of Versailles, and were carefully designed to get the most out of a very liberal interpretation of what the treaty permitted. Fast and heavily armed, they were ideal for commerce raiding and all three were used in this role. Of the class, the ''Admiral Scheer'' had the most successful career, sinking the most shipping tonnage of any surface ship in WWII, while the ''Graf Spee'' would get in a shootout with three British cruisers and be forced to scuttle in the harbor of Montevideo.
* '''''Admiral Hipper-Class Cruiser''''': A result of the British-German Treaty of 1935, supposed to cross the gap between the Bismarck-class battleships and the lighter Deutschland class. The most famous of these was the ''Prinz Eugen'', which accompanied the ''Bismarck'' on his fateful journey and was the only heavy German warship that survived the war intact. The planners of the Kriegsmarine called for a design that was exceptionally sturdy, and the result fulfilled these expectations more than they could have imagined; after the war, it was taken by the US Navy and used in the series of nuclear tests in American Samoa, [[Wat|where it survived all three hydrogen bomb blasts with only minor damage]], but it was so irradiated that the US towed it off the coast of the Bikini Atoll. Here it sank, after the propellers had dislodged as a result of the nuclear blasts in 1946. Its wreck is still above the surface, since the water where it sank isn't very deep.
* '''''Scharnhorst and Gneisenau''''':
* '''''Bismarck and Tirpitz''''': <s>A pair of battleships with guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees. As well as inspiration for a kickass Sabaton song </s> Memes aside, those were the largest battleships built by any European power and two of the biggest in the World; although not the biggest (''Yamato'' was heavier and around ten meters longer), or the ones with the most illustrious career (''Warspite'' served and kicked asses in both World Wars), they were by far the deadliest and best battleships around during the war, so powerful and dangerous to make Winston Churchill himself shit his pants. Much of the material regarding them as "technologically outdated", "useless" or inferior to their contemporaries are just results of the heavy discrediting campaign the Allies came up with during and after the war, so that everyone would think that "anything built by Nazi Germany = inferior to anything American and British and thus worthless", when that couldn't be farther from the truth: the ''Bismarck'' fought, with only the heavy cruiser ''Prinz Eugen'' at his side, the battleship HMS ''Prince of Wales'' and the battlecruiser HMS ''Hood'' and [[awesome|literally one-shotted the ''Hood'' after just five minutes of combat by hitting her in the aft magazine, with subsequent explosion breaking the ship in half]] and killed all but three of its crew, then pointed his guns on the ''Prince of Wales'' and mauled her badly enough to force her to withdraw; at that point, the ''Bismarck'' could have won the entire war for Germany. Alone. And that's for three simple reasons: A) Britain was already on the brink of starvation thanks to the German submarines and raiders, so a ship like the ''Bismarck'' left unchecked and free to hunt down convoys in the Atlantic for three months would have meant the UK would have been forced to surrender lest its population died for a lack of food; B) ''Hood'' had been always presented as the most powerful ship in the world and was the most loved ship of the Royal Navy; the fact that she had been sunk in an engagement where she technically had the upper hand in terms of power (since they were a battleship and a battlecruiser against a battleship and a heavy cruiser, even though the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Prinz Eugen'' were more modern) was an extremely heavy blow to the already strained British morale, that started raising questions as to the ability of the Royal Navy to actually counter the Germans' ambitions at sea; C) the Royal Navy lacked a ship powerful enough to confront the ''Bismarck'' in battle, without numbers on its side. It should be no surprise then that Churchill ordered every available ship to chase the ''Bismarck'' and destroy it, resulting in a fleet of more than 60 SHIPS searching the Atlantic to destroy him (and before you ask, yes, it is the biggest naval formation ever assembled to hunt down a single ship), that after three days of hunting managed to track him down, cripple him and then have a 5v1 engagement in which the Bismarck was shelled without mercy, [[awesome|yet still refused to sink]]. They tried torpedoes. [[awesome|And he still didn't sink]]. In the end it was left to the ''Bismarck'''s own crew to scuttle him, since they had no way of fighting back after the beating the ship had taken. All the while the ''Tirpitz'' proved to be another real bitch to kill, just like his big brother: after the ''Bismarck'' sinking, the ''Tirpitz'' received reinforced deck armor, even more advanced systems and a shitload more of AA guns to fight off enemy aircraft and she was considered so much of a threat that the British admiralty was forced to keep three ''King George V''-class battleships at Scapa Flow at any time and the Americans had to send the ''Iowa'', the ''Washington'' and the ''Alabama'' in case "The Beast", as Churchill called her, decided to move. After ship attacks failed to damage her, the RAF spent an entire year attacking her, but without results, forcing them to use almost [[what|6 tonnes bombs]] (the Tallboy) to destroy her, [[awesome|but ''Tirpitz'' survived even these]], until November 1944, when one of said bombs hit one of the ship's magazines and finally ssnk it. The only real "flaws" of the ships were the three-propeller system that made them difficult to maneuver at low speed and impossible if one of the rudders was to be destroyed, and the fact they were so massive that there were very few facilities capable of hosting them; in truth, the ''Bismarck'' class represented the very pinnacle of battleship design, with a perfect balance of overwhelming firepower, incredibly efficient armor protection (seriously, [[what|40% of their weight was dedicated to the armor]] and their armored belt was around 170 meters long, meaning that most of the ships were protected by it) and speed and their flaws were far less dangerous in a combat situation that those found on every other modern battleship of the war: the ''King George V''s were slower and both them and the ''Richelieu''s were uselessly complicated and suffered from severe mechanical failures and hydraulic problems (not to mention they couldn't shoot backwards), the ''Yamato''s were so big and heavy that they were impossible to maintain, furthermore their guns and shells were highly ineffective, their armor scheme was a total mess and their radar was much less advanced, the ''Iowa''s, while faster, with better technology and (only slightly) more powerful guns, had a terrible weakness in the form of extremely poor armor reliability to withstand both shells and torpedoes and that was discovered only months after the four battleships had been fully built and thus was impossible to rectify, a flaw they shared with both the ''North Carolina'' class and the ''South Dakota'' class, only that those two were also slower than the ''Bismarck'' and the ''Littorio''s were completely unreliable, lacking radar systems, their guns were extremely inaccurate and also had a very short lifespan. 
**A counterpoint: Frankly, none of the battleship circle-jerking above really matters in the end, because the era of battleships would come to a sudden and violent end on December 7, 1941. Indeed, it was an obsolete goddamn biplane launched from the carrier ''Ark Royal'' that doomed ''Bismarck'' by nailing it in the stern with a torpedo and jamming its steering. Everything after that was inevitable. Likewise, the fact that ''Bismarck'' sank ''Hood'' in eight minutes should not be taken as proof of its utter superiority. ''Hood'' was an old ship with thin armor that hadn't seen a significant update in years; this is kind of like someone bragging that their brand-new BMW is faster than their neighbor's twenty-year-old Vauxhall Astra. It also isn't surprising that it beat ''Prince of Wales''; that ship was fresh out of the yards, with all the attendant teething problems thereof, and there were civilian technicians aboard calibrating its guns even as it went into battle. Also, any idea that ''Bismarck'' could have singlehandedly won the war is dubious at best and laughable at worst. There is no way that ''Bismarck'' would have been allowed to roam free for three months; the Royal Navy was stretched thin, sure, but as already noted above, killing ''Bismarck'' was a top priority for them, especially after ''Hood'' was sunk. They would have (and did) devoted whatever resources were necessary to sinking it. Moreover, ''Bismarck'' was under strict orders not to engage any major enemy warships unless it was absolutely necessary to sink a convoy. There proved to be a damn good reason for this, because ''Prince of Wales'' put a hole through ''Bismarck'''s bow that breached its forward fuel tanks and flooded several key compartments, forcing its admiral to call off the mission and head for France. Thus, its greatest and only victory also forced it to abort its mission before it had seen or fired a single shot at any merchant ships, meaning that it was an operational and strategic loss for the Germans. Losing ''Hood'' was a blow to British pride, but it was ultimately a relatively minor loss in the grand strategic scheme. ''Bismarck'', meanwhile, represented 25% of the Kriegsmarine’s strength in capital ships, and its sinking meant that ''Tirpitz'' and the rest of the surface fleet were confined to port for the duration of the war on Hitler's direct orders. It doesn't matter if your battleship is a one-to-one match for the enemy's battleships when the enemy has more of them and is perfectly willing to send all of them after yours to make sure it's dead; that's a losing game no matter how you slice it.

* '''''Graf Zeppelin''''': The Nazis' sole attempt at building an aircraft carrier that was a weird carrier/cruiser hybrid. Not the best idea because having the heavy guns meant it could field less planes and having fewer planes meant that it would punch below its weight in shooting matches with other surface assets, though this is theoretical. It was never completed, due to the squabbling between Göring and the Admiralty as to whose department it belonged to and the ever decreasing need of an aircraft carrier in continental Europe. Despite never being ''officially'' cancelled until the end of the war, frequent changes to the design and the planes that were supposed to be used with it as well as severe materiel shortages made sure that construction was put on hold in 1943. By that time the about 85% complete ship was moved from port to port in the Baltic Sea. The Soviets captured it in 1945, used it for target practice and ultimately sunk it in 1947 off the coast of Danzig (or Gdansk in Polish), where its wreck was rediscovered in 2006.