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On May 31st 1916, during the First World War, one of the greatest naval battles took place in the North Sea outside of the Danish west coast between the naval forces of Great Britain and Germany. This paper aims to examine the outcome of the Battle of Jutland through three different perspectives on victory and defeat. The battle is well-debated as it has been considered a draw, as both actors saw themselves as victorious states after the battle.

This study therefore contributes to the debate by systematically investigate how three different perspectives on victory and defeat can explain the outcome. Through the perspectives end-state understandings, cost-benefit calculus and match-fixing, events during the battle and which contributed to the subsequent discussions about the outcome, will be analyzed.

The study results in the finding that one of the three perspectives, match-fixing, can explain victory and defeat in the battle. The result therefore shows that an systematic analyze of the perspectives can explain the outcome of the battle. This is an important contribution to the further research and demonstrates that there are ways to systematically measure an outcome with an explanatory ambition.