While the meteoric rise of the Imperial German Navy caught the attention of Europe and brought about a costly naval arms race, it was never able to out-build and out-innovate the Royal Navy, who responded with powerful and revolutionary designs such as HMS Dreadnought and the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships.

Beginning in the late 19th century, Kaiser Wilhelm II pursued a policy of naval strengthening, believing that a powerful navy was the key to power on the world stage and possibly also wishing to compete with his cousin, King George V of Britain.

A unified Germany only came into being in the late 19th century, thus it did not play a major role in the European colonial period while its inherited coastline (largely from the Kingdom of Prussia) was relatively long, Germany's geographical location at the center of the European continent meant that greater preference was given to its army and its navy never went beyond being a coastal defense force.

Throughout most of European history, Germany's naval prowess had always been eclipsed by its British, French, Dutch and Spanish neighbors.

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