SMS Moltke was the lead ship of the Moltke-class battlecruisers of the German Imperial Navy, named after the 19th-century German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke. Commissioned on 30 September 1911, the ship was the second battlecruiser of the Imperial Navy. Moltke, along with her sister ship Goeben, was an enlarged version of the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann, with increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional turret. Compared to her British rivals—the Indefatigable class—Moltke and her sister Goeben were significantly larger and better armored.



The ship participated in most of the major fleet actions conducted by the German Navy during the First World War, including the Battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland in the North Sea in 1915 and 1916, respectively. She also took part in the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in 1915 and Operation Albion in 1917 in the Baltic. Moltke was damaged several times during the war: the ship was hit by heavy-caliber gunfire at Jutland, and torpedoed twice by British submarines while on fleet advances.



Following the end of the war in 1918, Moltke, along with most of the High Seas Fleet, was interned at Scapa Flow pending a decision by the Allies as to the fate of the fleet. The ship met her end when she was scuttled, along with the rest of the High Seas Fleet in 1919 to prevent them from falling into Allied hands. The wreck of Moltke was raised in 1927 and scrapped at Rosyth from 1927 to 1929.