Post-war period
At the start of the war, the NDL's fleet totaled more than. Under the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war, all ships over and half of all units from 100 GRT to were confiscated.[29] In 1917, the United States had already confiscated the facilities in Hoboken and the NDL ships at the dock there. The prewar NDL fleet no longer existed.[28] The company was left with some small ships totalling. With these, the company resumed passenger service, tug service, and freight service in 1919. The 'flagship' was the 781-ton Grüß Gott.[30] From 1920 to 1939, NDL participated in the Seedienst Ostpreußen passenger and goods service to East Prussia.
In 1920, an air transport subsidiary was founded and soon merged with Sablatnig Flugzeugbau GmbH to form Lloyd Luftverkehr Sablatnig. In 1923, it combined with HAPAG's air transport subsidiary to form Deutscher Aero Lloyd, which merged with Junkers Luftverkehr AG on 6 January 1926 to become Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G., the predecessor of Lufthansa.
In August 1920, the NDL made an agency agreement with the U.S. Mail Steamship Co. (beginning in 1921, United States Lines). This made it possible to resume transatlantic service from Bremerhaven to New York with the former Rhein, now sailing under the US flag as the Susquehanna.[31] The unfinished Columbus had been awarded to Great Britain after the war and was purchased in 1920 by White Star Line, which had lost a significant amount of its ships in the war and wished to be compensated for the pre-war loss of the Titanic. Work at Danzig proceeded very slowly. Finally in autumn 1921, the so-called Columbus Agreement was reached, under which the German government and NDL undertook to facilitate rapid completion of the Columbus in exchange for the British government returning ownership to the NDL of six smaller ships which had spent the war years in South America: the mail ships Seydlitz and Yorck, the Gotha, and the cargo ships Göttingen, SS Westfalen (1905) and Holstein.[32] The company also began to build new freighters and passenger ships and to buy back other ships.[33] In late 1921, services to South America was resumed with the Seydlitz, and in early 1922, the East Asian service resumed with the Westfalen. On 12 February 1922, service to New York with their own ships resumed with Seydlitz.[34] The other ship of the Columbus-class, the former Hindenburg, was completed in 1924 and named Columbus. It was placed in scheduled transatlantic passenger service.
A brief post-war boom was followed by severe inflation in Germany, but despite this, NDL continued to expand its fleet. Twelve new ships of between 8,700 GRT and were placed in service for South and Central America and the Far East, and then, in addition to the Columbus, three new ships of between 13,000 GRT and were assigned to the North Atlantic (the München, Stuttgart and Berlin). In 1927 the former USS Zeppelin (1914) was purchased back from Great Britain and placed in service as the Dresden.[35]
In 1920, Carl Stimming became director general of NDL, while his predecessor Heineken became chairman of the board. Between 1925 and 1928, the company acquired three German shipping companies: HABAL, the Roland Line, and Argo.[36][37] The acquisition of the Roland Line brought Ernst Glässel onto the board of directors, where he was to have increasing influence. In 1926, the company were once more able to pay a dividend. American credit financed continuing expansion and orders for new ships.
In 1929 and 1930, the company put its two largest ships into service, SS Bremen (1928) and SS Europa (1928). With an average speed of about 27.9 kn, both were to win the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossings.[28] In 1929, the Columbus was completely refitted.
From 1928 to 1939, the volume of passengers traveling between the U.S. and Europe declined sharply. In 1928, the NDL transported about 8% of a passenger volume of 1,168,414 passengers; in 1932, 16.2% of the 751,592 passengers transported; in 1938, around 11% of 685,655 passengers. In addition, there was significant new competition from new Italian, French and British superliners: the Italian SS Rex and SS Conte di Savoia, the French SS Normandie , and the British RMS Queen Mary .[38]
