Plans for an improved Panzerschiff were renewed in 1937 with the P class. An improved version, the D class, was planned for 1934, but escalating design requirements in response to the French Dunkerque-class battleships resulted in the replacement of the D class with the two Scharnhorst-class battleships. They incorporated a series of radical innovations to save weight, including extensive use of welded construction and diesel engines. The first class of ships designed under these restrictions was the Deutschland class, designed in the late 1920s, and commonly referred to as "pocket battleships".
The terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, limited German warships to a displacement of 10,000 long tons (10,160 t). Four different designs-the Deutschland, D, P, and Admiral Hipper classes, comprising twenty-two ships in total-were prepared in the period, though only the three Deutschland-class ships and three of the five Admiral Hipper-class cruisers were ever built. The German navies of the 1920s through 1945-the Reichsmarine and later Kriegsmarine-built or planned a series of heavy cruisers starting in the late 1920s, initially classified as Panzerschiffe (armored ships).
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