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Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930), who joined the Prussian Navy in 1865 as a midshipman, was chiefly responsible for rapidly developing and enlarging the German Navy, especially the High Seas Fleet, from 1897 until the years immediately prior to the First World War. Epkenhans uses newly discovered documents to provide a fresh treatment of this important naval leader. In 1897, Tirpitz became the Secretary of State of the Imperial Navy Department. In four major building acts of 1898, 1900, 1908, and 1912, and, in working closely with Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tirpitz expanded the Imperial Navy from a small coastal force into a major blue-water navy. Great Britain, reacting with alarm to this challenge to its overseas trade and naval supremacy, accelerated the naval arms race by launching a revolutionary type of battleship, the Dreadnought, in 1906 and entering into strategic alliances with France and Russia. By the start of the First World War in 1914, the British Royal Navy still held a sizable advantage in capital ships over Germany, so that only one notable fleet action, Jutland in 1916, took place during the war. Tirpitz, who had become the German Navy commander with the outbreak of the war, thereafter became a staunch advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare. This policy did not differentiate between neutral and belligerent shipping and proved so controversial with the neutral United States that Germany was forced to retract it, albeit only temporarily. In the meantime, Tirpitz tendered his resignation to the Kaiser, who surprisingly accepted it. Tirpitz remained a minor figure thereafter, later serving the right-wing Fatherland Party as a deputy in the Reichstag.

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Product Description: Slavick, a captain with the US Air Force, recounts the adventures and victories of one of Germany's warships that, disguised as a merchant vessel, captured or sank 22 merchant ships, broke enemy codes, and got hold of valuable intelligence material from the British in a 655-day campaign during Worl...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The biography of Germany's Naval Commander Karl Donitz includes information from reports by his superiors, accounts by U-Boat survivors, and details of the testing of the U-Boat wolf-pack tactics from 1937 to 1939 (view table of contents)

A biography of Wilhelm Canaris, Hitler's director of espionage, investigates his involvement in several conspiracies to overthrow the Nazi regime, including one of many unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Hitler. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In a skillful combination of biographical case study and contextual analysis, Scheck presents a readable, often thrilling, account of the troubled transition period before the Nazi catastrophe. Drawing from a vast base of previously unused documents, the book traces the conspiracies and public campaigns of Great Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, a key figure of the German right...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Viewing Hitler's director of espionage as some bizarre Jekyl-and-Hyde figure, Hohne investigates Wilhelm Canaris's involvement in several conspiracies to overthrow the Nazi regime, including one of many unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Hitler