The Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine -- The Austro-Hungarian Navy -- was in at the beginning of World War I when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie lay in state aboard its flagship, and at the end when it dissolved along with the empire that commanded it. During the war, this small but powerful "fleet in being" forced the Allies to maintain a blockade of the Otranto Straits. German... [click here for more]
Victors write history. German Admiral Reinhard Scheer knew this, and wrote his own anyway. In this memoir of World War One, he says, "We are victors and vanquished at one and the same time, and in depicting our success the difficult problem confronts us of not forgetting that our strength did not last out to the end."
Admiral Scheer took command of the German High Seas Fleet in... [click here for more]
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