On 18 March 1920 when Raeder's close friend, Admiral Magnus von Levetzow who had seized Kiel proposed a march on Berlin with the aim of deposing the government after the failure of the putsch in Berlin, Raeder declared his intention of joining Levetzow, only to change his mind a few hours later, and hastily called the Defence Minister Gustav Noske to tell him he had been " misunderstood " about joining Levetzow on his proposed march.

When Admiral Wilhelm Marschall asked for such a post to be created, Raeder's reply was " But I will direct the war at sea ".

On 20 April 1936, just a few days before Raeder's 60th birthday, Hitler promoted him to Generaladmiral ( General Admiral ).

When Admiral Hermann Boehem sent Raeder a memo in late August saying that the disposition of the German fleet could only made sense if there was no general war, one of Raeder's aides, a Captain Fricke replied with the comment on the margin: " That is precisely the point!

Raeder's order that intended to avoid a repeat of the scuttling of the Admiral Graf von Spee read: " The German warship and her crew are to fight with their strength to the last shell, until they win or they go down with their flag flying.

Admiral Wilhelm Marschall after the war was to call Raeder's strategy as " wishful and prestige thinking, fateful overestimation of Germany's political and military possiblities, unfounded underestimation of the enemy England, and nonsensical insistence upon operational thoughts tied to the Z Plan ", a naval strategy based upon " phantasy, prestige-seeking and playing vabanque ".

The American historians ' Williamson Murray and Alan Millet wrote about Raeder's thinking about Norway: "... since fall 1939, Admiral Raeder had advocated an aggressive policy toward Scandinavia to protect ore shipments and to establish naval bases in the area.

The third was Raeder's aide Vice Admiral Erich Schulte-Mönting who supported Raeder's claim to have been an apolitical officer just doing his job, and that Raeder had not been a Nazi.

Dönitz was also a Grand Admiral, making him Raeder's equal, and he fiercely resented Raeder's patronising, condescending attitude.

Mein Leben was ghost-written by a committee of former Kriegsmarine officers headed by Admiral Erich Förste with Raeder's role limited to reviewing the chapters and either giving his approval or sending it back to the committee.

* Gilbey, Joseph Kriegsmarine: Admiral Raeder's Navy-a broken dream, 2006.

Grand Admiral Erich Raeder's orders to Admiral Günther Lütjens were that " the objective of the Bismarck is not to defeat enemies of equal strength, but to tie them down in a delaying action, while preserving her combat capacity as much as possible, so as to allow Prinz Eugen to get at the merchant ships in the convoy " and " The primary target in this operation is the enemy's merchant shipping ; enemy warships will be engaged only when that objective makes it necessary and it can be done without excessive risk.

Raeder was described as an ultra-conservative by the American historian Charles Thomas, who wrote that Raeder's core values were authoritarian, traditionalist and devoutly Lutheran.

The American historian Keith Bird wrote that nothing illustrated Raeder's right-wing, authoritarian outlook and his basic antipathy to the Weimar Republic better than his desire to ban the Reichsbanner, which existed for the defence of Weimar and his opposition to banning the SA, which existed for the destruction of Weimar.

The American historian Keith Bird wrote about Raeder's thinking about the role of the military, state and society: " For Raeder, the military and the navy in particular could not have a firm foundation unless they were grounded in the people: " A military must stand in close relationship with the people whom they serve and cannot lead its own existence ".

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.

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.

Hansen wrote that the Dithmarschen ships were Raeder's most enduring legacy as their provided the basis for the modern support ship ; after the war, the United States Navy took over the Dithmarschen and renamed it the USS Conech.

The Canadian historian Holger Herwig wrote that the Z Plan was Raeder's fantasy given that the Z Plan fleet would take 8 million tons of oil whereas in 1939 Germany imported a total of only six million tons of oil.

The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote about Raeder's role in invading Norway that :" Inside the German government during the war, Raeder always called attention to his own role in pushing the invasion of Norway ; after the war, he invariably blamed it on the British.

Raeder admitted in the Seekriegsleitung war diary that " The operation really breaks all the rules of naval warfare theory ", which the Canadian historian Holger Herwig wrote strongly suggests that Raeder's real reason for Weserübung was his desire to win the Kriegsmarine glory in the war as part of an effort to compete with the army and air force for funding.

An even more harsher assessment of Raeder's decision to send the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off the North Cape came from Murray and Millet, who wrote: " The Seekriegsleitung ... had lost none of its ability to confuse strategy with bureaucratic interest.

General Franz Halder after reading some of Raeder's memos wrote in his diary of " navalism run amuck " and commented that Raeder and other admirals that: " These people dream in continents ".

Murray and Millet wrote that Raeder's " Mediterranean strategy " had "... more to do with inter-service rivalry than with any strategic conception ".

The Greek historian Aristotle Kallis wrote that the best evidence suggests that in late 1940 Hitler was serious about carrying out Raeder's " Mediterranean plan ", but only within certain strict limits and conditions, and that he saw the " Mediterranean plan " as part of the preparations for Barbarossa by defeating Britain first.

The German historian Gerhard Schreiber wrote that Raeder's " Mediterranean plan " was a chimera because to carry out it would have required German diplomacy to make compromises with Vichy France, Spain and Italy that Hitler had no interest in making, and without the necessary diplomatic prelude the plan had no hope of ever being carried out.

Murray and Millet wrote that after the loss of the Bismarck that " Raeder's strategy of surface raiders had largely failed ".

Murray and Millet wrote that Raeder's views on the desirability of starting a war with the United States were " astonishing " because neither he nor anybody else in the Seekriegsleitung saw fit during the period July – December 1941 to commission studies on what would be the strategic consequences of war with the United States.

The American historian Charles Thomas wrote that Raeder's remarks about the executions in the Seekriegsleitung war diary seemed to be some sort of ironic comment in protest against the executions, which might have reflected a guilty conscience on the part of Raeder in enforcing a policy that he knew well to be illegal, and one that might lead him to being prosecuted for war crimes if Germany should lose the war.

The American historian Norman Goda wrote that Raeder's champions usually spoke if aggression against Norway was the only thing that Raeder had been convicted of, and that campaign to free Raeder rested upon "... a quasi-legal argument mixed with moral equivalency and wilful ignorance ".

The American historian Charles Thomas wrote that Raeder's remarks about the executions in the Seekriegsleitung war diary seemed to be some sort of ironic comment, which might had reflected a bad conscience on the part of Raeder.

The American historian Charles Thomas wrote that Raeder's remarks about the executions in the Seekriegsleitung war diary seemed to be some sort of ironic comment, which might had reflected a bad conscience on the part of Raeder.

Had it not been for a general amnesty for those involved in the Kapp putsch passed by the Reichstag on 8 August 1920, it is quite likely that Raeder's career would have ended in 1920 with a dishonourable discharge for high treason.

Raeder's traditionalism meant that honouring tradition and history played a huge role in the Navy under his leadership, with both officers and men encouraged to think of themselves at all times as part of an elite with a glorious history.

Raeder wanted to see the replacement of democracy with an authoritarian, militaristic regime that in Raeder's analogy ensure that Germany would become " one family " united behind the same goals of world power, or as Raeder put it in 1932 Germany needed a " unified Volk " led by one strong leader to win the next war.

Largely because of Raeder's building priorities, Germany went to war in 1939 with 26 ocean-going U-boats.

Reflecting Raeder's obsession with big battleships, the Z Plan called a new class of gigantic H battleships to be the core of the proposed fleet, which would have been the largest battleships ever built.

After the Z Plan was completed in the mid-1940s, Raeder's plans called for a " double pole strategy ", in which U-boats, Panzerschiffe and cruisers operating alone or in tandem would attack British commerce all over the globe, forcing the Royal Navy to divert ships all over the world to deal with these threats while at the same time two task forces of carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers would engage in frequent sorties into the North Sea, preferably from bases in Norway to destroy what remained of the British Home Fleet in a series of battles that would give Germany command of the sea.

The Royal Navy went on to note that based on its interrogations of Kriegsmarine POWs that Raeder's indoctrination policy had borne fruit in that the morale of the Kriegsmarine was extremely high, with the majority of officers and sailors very proud to fight for Führer and fatherland.

The period from April to June 1940 was one of the most stressful periods of the war for Raeder with operations involving the entire fleet in Norway, the French campaign and Raeder's obsessive fear that the Army and Air Force might win the war without the Navy, and which led to act in an manner that has been described as " irrational ".

Hitler agreed with Raeder's idea of sending German forces to North Africa at their meeting of 26 September 1940, but noted that he would need Italian permission to do so, and as it was not until Mussolini requested German help in early 1941 that the necessary Italian permission was obtained.

Once Barbarossa was completed with the destruction of the Soviet Union later in 1941, Raeder's " Mediterranean plan " would be executed in 1942 while German industry would focus on building the fleet envisioned in the Z Plan, that would, when complete, carry out Raeder's programme of trans-oceanic expansionism.

The American historian Keith Bird summed up the strategic differences between Hitler and Raeder: " Raeder's continual pressure for an intensified war with Britain and his willingness to risk war with the United States, however, conflicted with Hitler's short-term continental goals.