I once saw someone on Reddit call it the 'poor man's battlecruiser,' and I couldn't agree more. It's got the bloody layout of a pre-dreadnought battleship and the speed of a fast battleship, and yet the armour and armament of neither.

Yes, I get it; the Treaty of Versailles severely curtailed what could've been done with the Panzerschiffe, but if I were to design them myself, here's what I would do:

(DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a real-life naval architect, so please take my yapping with a pinch of salt.)

• Place the 11-inch gun turrets in front amidships, a bit like the Richelieu-class battleships to save weight and maximise armour protection
• Increased secondary armament and placed them within the superstructure, abaft the main turrets; 5x dual 15 cm guns and 5x 8.8 cm in single mounts (the loadout could be modernised to include Bofors 40 mm guns and hypothetical German dual-purpose guns)
• Used weight savings to increase speed to at least 30 knots; future designs could adopt geared steam turbine engines instead and increase speed to 31 or 32 knots
• Increased belt armour thickness to 4 inches, deck armour to 2 inches, main battery armour to 6 inches, and conning tower armour to 6.1 inches

Results: You now have an 11,000-tonne armoured cruiser with significantly better protection and speed. While not enough to win the war in the Nazis' favour, at least the Admiral Graf Spee would've given the English a harder time sinking her by the River Plate.