This book is essentially a large Order-of-Battle which faithfully lists the major German warships between the time periods indicated. But that is strictly as far as it goes. There are no photographs, no detailed deck plans and no essays into German thoughts on the designs, why certain aspects were prefered over others, nor of any revelations revealed by wartime combat. Primary data is sparce and in the case of armor protection is disapointingly abreviated. This work is IMO vastly inferior to Conway's All the World's Fighting ships, which not only contained far more comprehensive and better organized data but also in the essay portion gave the reader a firm general idea of the layout of the armor, especially in the case of battleships. In Groner's work the reader is simply presented with numbers in XX-XX-XX format where the dashes indicate a change in thickness to the next number etc, with no further info on exactly where the thicknesses change or anything else. The reader has to go back to the very beginning of the book to find out that this system for all ships gives armor thickness (in metrics) from stern to bow.
Machinery and armament specs are covered slightly better but are still quite abreviated and no diserations into their workings and/or preformance are included. Ship histories are extremely abreviated and give the reader little clue as to how these ships preformed.
All in all a very disapointing piece and one which immediately went back to Amazon as i am fortunate to possess Conway's ATWFS series. In conclusion i would only recomend this book to those for whom a Conway's source covering 1861 - 1906 is unavailable