German interest in the Caribbean was a series of unsuccessful proposals made by the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) during the late nineteenth century to establish a coaling station somewhere in the Caribbean. Germany was rapidly building a world-class navy but coal burning warships needed frequent refueling and could only operate within range of a coaling station. Preliminary plans were vetoed by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. By 1900 American "naval planners were obsessed with German designs in the hemisphere and countered with energetic efforts to secure naval sites in the Caribbean." German naval planners in the 1890-1910 era denounced the Monroe Doctrine as a self-aggrandizing legal pretension to dominate the hemisphere. They were even more concerned with the possible America