* German leadership rejected Hartenstein's cease fire proposal, partly because Admiral Raeder did not think it wise to enter into a " deal " with the Allies, nothing was to interfere with Eisbär's surprise attack on Cape Town to strike at the supplies destined for the British and Soviets, and Hitler had directed that no word of Laconias sinking or the proposed Axis rescue be transmitted to the Allies, though subordinates ignored Hitler's orders and communicated messages to the Allies about the proposed rescue attempt.

From 1928 onwards, Raeder used his close friend, the retired Admiral Magnus von Levetzow who had become a Nazi as his contact with Adolf Hitler.

Through Raeder approved of Hitler as a man who believed that it was necessary for Germany to achieve " world power status ", he disapproved of Hitler's proposed means of attaining it.

In 1932, Raeder often used Levetzow, who was a Nazi Reichstag deputy to convoy messages to Hitler that he and the rest of the Navy were disappointed that Hitler did not see the necessity of sea power as a prerequisite for world power, and had even worse ordered the Nazi Reichstag delegation to vote against the Papen government's umbau ( rebuilding ) programme for the Navy in November 1932.

In 1933, Raeder welcomed the coming to power of Hitler, believing that this was the beginning of the militarized Volksgemeinschaft that would let Germany become the world's greatest power.

Shortly afterwards, Raeder had his first private meeting with Hitler, and came away impressed, believing that if Hitler was no navalist, then he could be made into one just like his mentor Tirpitz had converted Wilhelm II to navalism.

Raeder believed that if he could " educate " Hitler about the importance of sea power, then he would assure the creation of the greatest fleet ever in German history.

Raeder was to spent the rest of the 1930s lobbying Hitler for bigger and bigger naval budgets.

Through Raeder never joined the N. S. D. A. P, maintaining throughout his life that he was " above politics ", in 1937, Hitler awarded Raeder the Golden Party Badge to honour him for his work in promoting National Socialism in the Kriegsmarine.

The American historian Keith Bird wrote if Raeder's claims after 1945 that he resisted efforts to introduce National Socialism in the Navy were true, then it would been very unlikely that Hitler would had awarded Raeder the Golden Party Badge.

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 ".

Following the Riskflotte ( Risk Fleet ) theories of Tirpitz, Raeder argued to Hitler that the Navy had two political purposes to play, which made the Navy indispensable to his foreign policy, namely its " risk " value and " alliance " value.

Raeder contended to Hitler that on one hand an extremely powerful German fleet would deter Britain from intervening if Germany should commit aggression against another European country while on the other hand, a strong German battle fleet could tip the scales in the event of an Anglo-American war, and as such, Britain would ally herself with Germany against the rising power of the United States ( like many Germans of his time, Raeder believed there was a strong possibility of an Anglo-American war ).

In late 1938, Hitler ordered Raeder to accelerate warship construction.

On 4 January 1939 Raeder advised Hitler that given the Kriegsmarines status as third in regards to allocation of resources and spending behind the Army and the Air Force, the construction targets could not be met within the deadlines given.

On 27 January 1939 Hitler approved the Plan Z presented to him by Raeder, and ordered that henceforth the Kriesgmarine would be first in regards to allocation of money and raw materials, marking the first time during Raeder's tenure that the Navy had enjoyed such a position, indeed the first time since 1912 that the Navy had been given the first call on the defence budget.

With this force, Raeder promised Hitler that he could destroy the Royal Navy.

Through Raeder expressed some worry in the first half of 1939 over the prospect of a war with Britain when the Plan Z had barely began, he accepted and believed in the assurances of Hitler and the Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop that neither Britain nor France would go to war if the Reich attacked Poland.

Having spent the last six years championing to Hitler sea power as the only way in which Germany could become a world power, Raeder was anxious that the Kriegsmarine be seen as doing more than its share of the fighting to ensure that Hitler would reward the Navy by not cutting its budget after the war.

Both Hitler and Raeder believed that Langsdorff should have fought the British and gone down fighting, even if it meant the deaths of most or all of the crew of Admiral Graf von Spee.

Because the Allies had indicated that they were going to pursue criminal charges for German war crimes, Hitler tried to gain the loyalty and silence of his subordinates by making them all parties to the planned genocide.

After an intense argument with General Heinz Guderian, who insisted on a change of command of the Army Group Vistula, Hitler assigned General Walther Wenck to Himmler's headquarters to take over command of a limited counter-offensive ; Hitler then observed that it was not possible for him to move the troops needed for Guderian's planned double pincer attack from neighbouring regions.

In the last days of the war, when it became clear that Hitler planned to die in Berlin, Himmler left his long-time superior to try to save himself.

As a result of the message from Rome and the ratification of the Anglo-Polish treaty, Hitler cancelled the invasion of Poland which was planned for 26 August, and instead ordered it held back until 1 September in order to give Germany some time to break up the unfavourable international alignment.

For Hitler, the Soviet Union was to be Germany's Lebensraum and he had no interest in even setting up puppet governments in a region he planned to colonize.

Gustav's skepticism toward the Nazis waned when Hitler dropped plans to nationalize business, the Communists gained seats in the November 6 elections, and Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher suggested a planned economy with price controls.

Consequently, Hitler postponed his planned 26 August invasion of Poland to 1 September.

The importance of Thessaloniki to Nazi Germany can be demonstrated by the fact that, initially, Hitler had planned to incorporate it directly in the Third Reich ( that is, make it a part of Germany ) and not have it controlled by a puppet state such as the Hellenic State or an ally of Germany ( Thessaloniki had been promised to Yugoslavia as a reward for joining the Axis on 25 March 1941 ).

A masterstroke was to claim that Gregor Strasser, whom Hitler hated, was part of the planned conspiracy against him.

Hitler and his associates planned to use Munich as a base for a big march against Germany's Weimar Republic government.

After hearing reports of and witnessing massacres in Poland, Canaris on 12 September 1939 travelled to Hitler's headquarters train, at the time in Upper Silesia, to register his objection to the atrocities ; prior to reaching Hitler he encountered General Wilhelm Keitel whom he informed: " I have information that mass executions are being planned in Poland, and that members of the Polish nobility and the Roman Catholic bishops and priests have been singled out for extermination.

Though the building was hit by bombs several times, it emerged from the war largely unscathed ; rumour at the time had it that the reason the building had fared so well was that Adolf Hitler had planned to use it as his headquarters in London.

Hitler withdrew Germany from the League of Nations once he planned to take over Europe.

By June 1944 the conspirators had given up on him ( and indeed on all the senior field commanders ), because he was not approached by the group around Tresckow and Stauffenberg who hatched the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler with a bomb at the Wolf's Lair ( Wolfsschanze ), his headquarters in East Prussia, and had no inkling of what was planned.

His duties until 1942 were occupied exclusively by architectural work, mainly large works that Hitler planned but would never build.

To decrease the number of opposition members of parliament who could vote against the Enabling Act, Hitler planned to ban the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands ( the Communist Party of Germany or KPD ), which at the time held 17 % of the parliament's seats, after the elections and before the new Reichstag convened.

Before his triumphant entry into Vienna, Hitler had planned to leave Austria as a puppet state, with an independent but loyal government.

When Súñer met Hitler on September 16, Hitler did not press very hard for Spanish involvement in the war, perhaps because he planned to meet Franco himself very soon.

Knowing that Franco feared a hostile German invasion of Spain if he refused to cooperate, Canaris informed him that Hitler had no such intention due to the planned invasion of Russia.

Thälmann's interpretation was that his two defence lawyers, both Nazi Party members ( he nonetheless trusted them to a certain extent ) at some point gathered that he planned to use the trial as a platform to appeal to world public opinion and denounce Hitler, and had told the court.

However, by 1940, Hitler began to plan for a potential invasion ( planned to start in 1943 ) of the Soviet Union.

More with Nazi propaganda in mind than for any strategic reason, Adolf Hitler planned the line from 1936 and had it built between 1938 and 1940.