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.

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.

Raeder's authoritarian style led him in 1937 to refuse to create the office of chief of the admiralty staff.

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.

Raeder's major fear in mid-1940 was that Hitler might not cripple Britain enough when the expected British surrender came, and instead make a " compromise peace " that would allow Britain to keep its " great sea power ".

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.

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.

The American historian Charles Thomas maintains that it was more likely that Raeder's silence during the Hossbach conference was a gambit on his part to increase the Navy's budget by being seen to be supportive of Hitler's foreign policy when the Army leaders were expressing some doubts about the timing.

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.

Raeder's last attempt at using a capital ship as a raider occurred in June 1941, when he ordered the pocket battleship Lützow into the North Atlantic ; she was badly damaged by an attack from British torpedo planes on 13 June 1941 that put her out of commission for six months.

The Nuremberg trial also a further escalation of Raeder's ongoing feud with Dönitz when an affidavit of Raeder's was introducted as evidence against Dönitz.

In a 1950 interview, Erika Raeder claimed that her septuagenarian husband was forced to do brutal " hard labour " in Spandau when Raeder's job in Spandau was to work in the prison library.

Another debate that brought Raeder's name into the news had started in January 1956 when Captain Karl-Adolf Zenker of the Bundesmarine gave a speech before a group of cadets, which he had mentioned he shown to Raeder in advance for his approval, during which Zenker argued not only for the innocence of Raeder and Dönitz whom Zenker called officers just doing their duty in "... a war thrust upon them ", but also called Raeder and Dönitz great heroes who should be role models when the cadets became officers.

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.

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!

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.

Above all, he wanted to ensure that the Navy would have a pre-eminent role in Hitler's Weltreich and armament priorities far beyond what it could hope to achieve in this war " Hitler saw the conquest of the Soviet Union, which was intended to give Germany lebensraum and with it control of enough of Eurasia, to provide sufficient Autarky to challenge the sea powers and carry out Raeder's plans for trans-oceanic expansionism.

Raeder's demand in 1942 that on top of his lifetime exemption from paying income taxes Hitler also cancel out taxes on the interest he earned from his 4, 000-Reichsmarks-a-month payment from Konto 5 was viewed as outrageous greed.

In response to Raeder's defence of pre-emptive war against Norway, the British prosecutor David Maxwell Fyfe read out the minutes of a meeting between Raeder and Hitler on 26 March 1940, which read: " British landing in Norway is not considered imminent-Raeder suggests action by us at the next new moon-to which Hitler agrees.

Maxwell Fyfe brought up Raeder's order of 15 October 1939, which read: " Measures which are considered necessary from a military point of view will have to be carried out, even if they are not covered by existing international law ... Every protest from neutral powers will have to be turned down ... The more ruthlessly economic warfare is waged ... the sooner the war will come to an end ".

The Social Democratic politician Carlo Schmid read out in the Bundestag the anti-Semitic lines from Raeder's Heroes ' Day Speech of 1939 ; noted that Raeder had not only refused to apologise for that speech, but testified at Nuremberg that he believed that Germany was threatened by " International Jewry "; and argued that Germans to have a better future meant Raeder could not be a role model or seen as a hero as Zenker and Heye wanted.

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

Raeder's testimony had been intended to help clear the consciences of Müller and other S. P. D ministers who were planning to perform a policy U-turn on the " pocket battleships " by stressing that he was supposedly not returning to the policy of Tirpitz and aggressive navalism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Raeder's strategy which was a modified version of the " double pole " strategy he had devised before the war called for the Panzerschiffe, auxiliary cruisers and submarines to attack British merchantmen all over the world to force the Royal Navy to divert its strength while at the same time the main surface ships would make frequent raids into the North Sea to gradually reduce the Royal Navy's strength.

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.

Hitler was sympathic to Raeder's anti-American fulminations, but said that the war with the Soviet Union would have to finished before taking on the United States.

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.

Dönitz told the former Foreign Minister Konstantin von Neurath that " It had been Raeder's fault that until the middle of 1940 only two U-boats slid down the ways " per month, and that if only he had been Navy Commander-in-Chief in 1940 then he would have won the war.

Such was the degree of Raeder's lobbying for bigger naval budgets that in early 1932, General Kurt von Schleicher, who viewed Raeder as a threat to the Army budget attempted to discredit Raeder by leaking a story in the press that Raeder was plotting to be defence minister.

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

Raeder's deputy, Admiral Rolf Carls wrote with pride in his diary in October 1941 that " all our forces have been deployed so often and so recklessly that never can the charge of tepidity be levelled against us ".

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.

Raeder claimed that he was not involved in a conspiracy to commit aggression because Hitler's statements in the Hossbach Memorandum of 1937 and again to senior officers including Raeder for plans for a war with Poland in May and August 1939 together with Raeder's own statements to Hitler about seizing Norway in October – November 1939 were all just mere talk that was not to be taken seriously.

Taylor commented about Raeder's claim to have been just an apolitical professional doing his job was meaningless because: " It is an innocent and respectable business to be a locksmith, but it is nonetheless a crime if the locksmith turns his talents into picking the locks of his neighbours and looting their homes.

When not working in the library, Raeder spent his time debating with the prison chaplain, the French Pastor Georges Casalis who believed that Raeder's soul might be saved if he confessed his guilt, and tried hard to save Raeder.

Since in his own mind, he was still Germany's leader, Dönitz saw himself as Raeder's superior, and expected Raeder to be his subordinate.

Erika Raeder's campaign to free her husband was joined by German veterans, who bombarded the American, British and French governments with demands that Raeder, who they claimed was an innocent man wrongly convicted at Nuremberg, be freed.

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.