Following the loss of the in 1941, with Allied air-superiority threatening the remaining battle-cruisers in French Atlantic harbors, the ships were ordered to make the Channel Dash back to German ports. Operating from fjords along the coast of Norway, which had been occupied since 1940, convoys from North America to the Soviet port of Murmansk could be intercepted though the spent most of her career as fleet in being. After the appointment of Karl Dönitz as Grand Admiral of the "Kriegsmarine" (in the aftermath of the Battle of the Barents Sea), Germany stopped constructing battleships and cruisers in favor of U-boats. Though by 1941, the navy had already lost a number of its large surface ships, which could not be replenished during the war.