Did Tirpitz Lose the War for Germany?

It followed that as the Germans began building a large fleet, the British–including the British public–saw that fleet as a direct threat. For all the Germans’ talk about how the fleet might deter the British from entering a European war, the existence of a large German fleet in effect guaranteed that the British would enter the war. That in turn guaranteed that the war would have an important maritime aspect. Maritime did not mean simply naval; it did not mean that sinking the German fleet, for example, would necessarily win the war for the Allies. It meant instead that the Allies gained potential mobility around the edges of Europe and also that the Allies could draw strength from the rest of the world. Every Australian soldier who fought in France or in the Middle East got there by sea, courtesy of Allied–mainly British–sea control. Conversely, when the U-boats threatened to break maritime communications in 1917, they posed a mortal threat to the Allies.