These ships, which were among the most sought-after by the Royal Navy, armored with Krupp factory plating, each had a displacement of 32,000 tons and carried nine 11-inch guns in triple turrets, two in the front and one in the rear. The secondary armaments included fourteen 4.1-inch guns and sixteen 1.5-inch guns as anti-aircraft weapons, as well as twelve 5.9-inch guns. Capable of reaching a maximum speed of thirty-one knots, they were faster than any British ship. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, fully aware of this fact, described them as "targets of utmost importance." The previous November, the two ships had engaged in a naval battle with the British patrol vessel "Rawalpindi," sending the sixteen-thousand-ton ship and its two hundred thirty-eight crew members – including the captain – to the icy depths between Norway and Iceland. Afterwards, they withdrew to the German port of Kiel and spent the winter frozen at their anchorages.

That winter proved to be extremely harsh. A wave of ice and snow swept across all of Europe, as temperatures plunged to the lowest levels reached in nearly a century. In Rome, fifteen centimeters of snow fell, marking the heaviest snowfall ever recorded in the city’s history. The mercury dropped below zero in Spain and France. The River Thames in London froze over a length of thirteen kilometers. Ice blocked the Danube, which Germany used to import loads of oil, metals, and grains from the Baltic to feed its starving war machine. "The news of ice appearing in the river’s current," reported the New York Times, "was welcomed by the diplomats of the Allies." Further north, where the Finns were conducting a fierce defensive battle against the invading Red Army, there were few reasons for celebration.