Hasn't most historical document shown that the Bismarck (I assume you talk about the ship, and not the person) was quite well-built and quite well-functioning.

The big problem with Bismarck was that it got too long from home, with no air superiority cover and no destroyers that could keep up. It doesn't help to have an excellent chain link, if the other links are not just as good.

One thing to note that on the market, many companies often start at a similar time to create a new product. Often, it is the general availability of a new technology that makes a new product feasible - either from a technical or economical point. When several companies starts at the same time, it is important to be first. Looking at WW2 Germany is something completely different. Germany did start to design and build in a number of areas for a number of years before starting the war, while a number of politicians in other countries either looked in another direction or was too stupid to add 1+1 together. Bismarck was well over 50000 ton, fully loaded, which was much bigger than allowed by agreements made at the ending of WW1.

Another thing: Before they got sunk, both Bismarck and Tirpitz managed quite well to scare the allied convoys almost to death. They took very, very long routes around locations where Bismarck or Tirpitz was rumoured to be, sometimes delaying a convoy by one or more weeks. And the allied forces had to invest tremendous resources to try to track down the two ships (and keep their convoys alive).

No, I don't think you should count Bismarck or Tirpitz as big and blunt monuments instead of very efficient war machines.

Next thing is of course that both US and Russia got their hands on a lot of German scientists at the end of the war. Leaks or no leaks - I think Russia would have got their nuclear capabilities anyway. Maybe three to five years later, but that wouldn't have made too much of a difference. Especially since neither side had equipment to properly supervise the other side. It wasn't so easy to detect the explosion of a smaller nuclear device, when all you could detect and speculate about was weak shock waves that could just as well have been natural.