The heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen was a product of the limitations and subsequent breaches of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921. These "Washington Cruisers" were meant to be capped at 10,000 tons displacement and armed with 8-inch (20.3 cm) guns, but the Kriegsmarine's designs, including the Prinz Eugen, significantly exceeded these limits, growing up to 60% larger.

Built between 1935 and 1937, the Prinz Eugen belonged to the second, improved batch of five such cruisers, following the Admiral Hipper and Blücher. Originally, the Prinz Eugen, Seydlitz, and Lützow were planned as light cruisers with 15 cm guns, but due to material shortages and the perceived threat of new Soviet cruisers, they were completed as heavy cruisers of the Prinz Eugen design.

Designed for commerce raiding, these ships were intended to attack merchant shipping and evade enemy warships. However, their high-pressure steam engines proved inefficient, resulting in high fuel consumption and limited operational range, unsuitable for North Atlantic operations. The complex engines were also prone to breakdowns. Of the five planned ships, only three were completed.

The Prinz Eugen, nicknamed the "lucky ship," was the only major German warship to survive World War II. After the war, she was seized by the United States and used as a target ship during the "Operation Crossroads" atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946. Although she survived the blasts, the resulting radioactive contamination led to her scuttling near Kwajalein Atoll later that year.

Despite her demise, several artifacts of the Prinz Eugen survive today. A floatplane (T3 + BH) is held at the Smithsonian's Silverhill Storage Facility, the ship's bell is displayed at the US Naval Museum in Washington, D.C., the guns of turret "Anton" are at a weapons testing facility in Dahlgren, Virginia, and one of her propellers is on display at the Marineehrenmal in Laboe, Germany.