Of course, once the war had started, all treaty limits were off, and cruisers could grow to any size.

A ship 1/3 larger than her potential adversary is bound to have some advantages! This resulted in ships nominally rated at 10,000t standard displacement which actually displaced upward of 13,300t, a 33% overrun. Some nations took these treaty limits seriously, particularly the British and the Americans, others simply cheated by as much as they thought they could get away with.

And, of course, there was the London Naval Treaty of 1930, which limited all cruisers to a maximum weight of 10,000 tons standard displacement. Often international, or national, political concerns played the dominant role in the philosophy behind the design of warships. One might assume that the focus of every new design would be to surpass the likely enemy's recent ships in fighting power, and that is a common thread, but not the only one, in the fabric of warship design. It will not be a direct 'comparison test', but some conclusions will be drawn. This will include the class of ships I regard as the pinnacle of design from each nation, as well as the rational for their design, their mission as it were, and a few words about their wartime record. In this essay I intend to examine the heavy cruisers of the major naval powers of World War II. Photo Courtesy of Naval Warship Image Archives.

World of warships german heavy cruisers