Page "Erich Raeder" Paragraph 17

Raeder was not a radical anti-Semitic along Nazi lines, but he shared the widespread anti-Semitic prejudices of most German conservatives of the time, viewing Jews as an alien element who were corrupting the otherwise pure German Volk.

In February 1934 the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg, on his own initiative, had all of the Jews serving in the Reichswehr and Reichsmarine given an automatic and immediate dishonourable discharge.

As a result 74 Jewish soldiers and sailors lost their jobs for no other reason than their being Jewish.

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service had excluded those Jews who were World War I veterans, so Blomberg's discharge order was his getting around the law.

Raeder made no protest against Blomberg's order.

Raeder accepted without complaint orders from the War Minister von Blomberg on 21 May 1935 that those who were of " non-Aryan descent " would not be permitted to join the Wehrmacht and all members of the Wehrmacht could only marry women of pure " Aryan descent " and another order from Blomberg in July 1935 saying no member of the Wehrmacht could buy from a store owned by " non-Aryans " under any conditions.

At the same time, Raeder fought Blomberg's attempts to have officers who were Mischling or were married to Mischling dishonourably discharged.

Raeder's biographer, Keith Bird wrote about Raeder's anti-Semitism: " Raeder's adoption of Nazi racial epithets, reflective of the assimilation of the tenets of National Socialism in the Wehrmacht, indicate his ongoing readiness to interpret and moderate Hitler's policies and ideology and assimilate them into his own Pan-German conservative world-view.

By intermingling them with the ideology of the late nineteenth century Bismarckian century, he could more easily accept them.

At his Nuremberg trial, reflecting the traditional anti-Semitic bias of the German middle class and naval officers of his generation, he argued that after the experience of 1917 and 1918, " International Jewry " had " gained an excessively large and oppressive influence in German affairs ", and " one could not be surprised that the National Socialist government tried to loosen and, as far as possible remove this large and oppressive influence.

" Although Raeder was not anti-Semitic in the virulent National Socialist sense, he tolerated statements from his senior officers such as Admiral Schuster ( appointed by Raeder as the inspector of education and training ) who told new recruits in 1937 that they must be " racially and morally sound .".

In a speech given on Heroes ' Day on 12 March 1939, Raeder praised Hitler: "... for the clear and unmerciful declaration of war against Bolshevism and International Jewry is referring to the Kristallnacht pogrom here, whose drive for destruction of peoples we have felt quite enough in our racial body ".

In marked contrast to his total indifference to what was happening to the Jews, the conscience of the pious Lutheran Raeder was often troubled by the anti-Christian tendencies of the Nazi regime.

Raeder believed that the attacks on Christianity were the work of a few radicals in the N. S. D. A. P.

and that Hitler himself was a good Christian.

Raeder severed his once close friendship with Pastor Martin Niemöller after Niemöller rejected his advice to stay clear of " politics " and accept the application of the Aryan paragraph to the Lutheran church.