The existence of the German Navy in WW II was not the result of a rational analysis of national strategic objectives. The questions of what the German navy was supposed to accomplish and the best way it could contribute to the achievement of national goals were apparently never explored. The statement that, "With the exception of Jutland they never really fully challenged British control of the seas. At the time Germany could afford to lose their fleet; Britain couldn't.", while essentially true, reveals a deeper fundamental truth; Germany was a "continental" or land-based power to which a blue-water navy was an expensive luxury, not a vital tool for furthering strategic objectives.

This remained true in WW II, as well. While the RN could control the seas, it was powerless to affect Germany on the continent, just so long as Germany could secure the crucial raw materials which fed German industries and enabled her war machine to function. If Britain could not challenge Germany on the Continent, it was equally true that Germany could not challenge Britain at sea, nor did it have any real reason to do so. Since Germany had no vital strategic objectives which required a navy (except coastal defense), there was no logical reason to build the Bismarck or the Graf Zeppelin. The resources expended on these ships could have been more usefully employed elsewhere. Commerce-raiding is traditionally the strategy of weak navies and could have been very effectively carried out by armed merchant cruisers and/or long ranged cruisers. Germany's cruisers were, however, built for other duties and, with the exception of the panzerschiffs did not have the requisite range for such a role.

Aircraft carriers would have done Germany no good as the projection of airpower beyond coastal ranges had absolutely no application in Germany's strategic aims. Moreover, the successful operation of aircraft carriers proved to be a matter of developing proper doctrine and design which required decades to accomplish. The Graf Zeppelin design, while ambitious, drew the wrong lessons from other navies' carrier design and doctrine and would have represented an abject failure for the Germany Navy.

The one exception to the above was the U-boat. Because of the unique geography of Britain, and Britain's inter-war neglect of underwater defense technology and doctrine, the U-boat represented the one naval weapon which Germany might have developed that could have defeated the RN. But Germany failed to produce the U-boat in the numbers needed in the time frame that might have secured them victory in the Atlantic war.