There were, almost as a matter of principle, infringements of the Versailles provisions, wherever possible in matters of detail, from the outset. Early E-boats, for example, were secretly armed for torpedo-firing because it was not intended to count them against the number of torpedo-firing vessels allowed by the Treaty. (See N.D., 141-C of February 1932). Another N.D. (32-C) contains a long list of the evasions of this type, as effected up to or intended in 1933. N.D., 17-C and D-854, show that a small amount of U-boat building was carried on abroad, in Holland, Spain, Finland, for example, by the German Navy continuously after 1920. These and other documents are recapitulated in Nuremberg Proceedings, Part I, pp. 191-203. Up to the end of 1934, however, the total effect of these many minor infringements had done little to create a new German Navy.

In 1934-35 more serious infringements began, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement being anticipated in several directions. A building programme in accordance with the Agreement was announced within a month of the Agreement, and some progress was made with it before the negotiations began, as, for example, with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (N.D., 180-C) and with the construction of U-boats in Germany, the first of which were launched in June 1935, the month in which the Agreement was concluded.

But such further expansion as took place was kept within the restricted limits negotiated with Great Britain in 1935. It is clear, moreover, that, to some extent, the Agreement was anticipated, and the anticipation was deliberately allowed to leak out, with the object of putting pressure on Great Britain to secure her acceptance of the German naval proposals. The fact, for example, that U-boat construction had begun in Germany in contravention of Versailles was openly announced, with this end in view, before the beginning of the Anglo-German negotiations.