 In the 1930s, Leipzig was used as a training cruiser, as well as to make goodwill visits to foreign ports. She participated in non-intervention patrols during the Spanish Civil War. In the first year of World War II, she performed escort duties for warships in the Baltic and North seas. Leipzig was torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Salmon on 13 December 1939 while on one of these operations. The cruiser was badly damaged, and the necessary repairs took almost a year to complete. She thereafter resumed her duties as a training ship. She provided gunfire support to the advancing Wehrmacht troops as they invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
