He actually took the Bismarck's sinking fairly calmly, as it did not come out of the blue. The series of British attacks on the battleship made him certain that Bismarck would be sunk. Hitler was getting used to excuses from the Navy, and they had been making them since the Graf Spee. That disaster made him furious. After the Bismarck sank, however, he gave orders that there would be no further raiding cruises by German battleships or heavy cruisers into the Atlantic. He also began the long-lead demands for the return of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau from Brest, with the intention of concentrating the battlefleet in Norway, which he said was the "zone of destiny" in the war. Hitler's decision cancelled plans for a raiding cruise by the pocket battleship Lutzow, to follow-on the highly successful (99,000 tons) foray by the Admiral Scheer.
