Four König-class battleships were laid down in 1911–1912, and four Bayern-class battleships were laid down in 1913–1915, though only two- Bayern and Baden-were completed. The four Helgolands followed in 1908, as well as the five Kaisers in 1909–1910. In order to remain in the battleship race, Tirpitz secured the funds for the first four German dreadnoughts, the Nassau class, which were laid down beginning in June 1907. The launch of the "all-big-gun" HMS Dreadnought in 1906 revolutionized battleship construction, and forced Tirpitz to radically alter his shipbuilding plan. Following the Kaiser Friedrich III class were the Wittelsbach, Braunschweig, and Deutschland classes, the last pre-dreadnoughts built in Germany. Tirpitz secured a series of Naval Laws between 19 that drastically increased the budget of the navy and authorized scores of battleships the final law envisioned a fleet of some 41 battleships, 25 of which would have been assigned to the High Seas Fleet, with the remainder in reserve. Tirpitz's "risk theory" planned a fleet that would be sufficiently powerful so that Great Britain, then the world's preeminent naval power, would avoid risking war with Germany in order to preserve its superiority. The appointment of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz to the post of State Secretary of the Navy in 1897 accelerated naval construction. The navy immediately pushed for the construction of the four Brandenburg-class battleships, after which soon followed five Kaiser Friedrich III-class ships. With the accession to the throne of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1888, the Kaiserliche Marine began a program of naval expansion befitting a Great Power. To defend its North and Baltic Sea coasts in wartime, Germany had previously built a series of smaller ironclad warships, including coastal defense ships, and armored frigates. The German navies-specifically the Kaiserliche Marine and Kriegsmarine of Imperial and Nazi Germany, respectively-built a series of battleships between the 1890s and 1940s. The battleships of I Battle Squadron and II Battle Squadron before the outbreak of World War I
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