Raeder's repeated insistence that he was " above politics " meant in practice that the was loyal to the Reich, not the republic.

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.

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 ".

Raeder later claimed during his testimony at Nuremberg and in his memoirs to have been opposed to the denunciation of the A. G. N. A., which he claimed to have been kept in the dark about, but contemporary evidence from 1939, not the least Raeder's own role as the author of the Z Plan suggests otherwise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Raeder's principal reason for going ahead with Rheinübung was his knowledge of the upcoming Operation Barbarossa, where the Kriegsmarine was only going to play a small and supporting role, and his desire to score a major success with a battleship before Barbarossa that might impress upon Hitler the need not to cut the budget for capital ships.

" In November 1932, much to Raeder's delight, the Chancellor Franz von Papen approved of his plants to expand the Navy beyond the limits imposed by the Treaty of Versailles.

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.

Finally, Raeder's endless championship of sea power and of the need for the Navy to have primacy in the defence budget bore fruit, and Hitler was won over to the cause of navalism.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ".

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.

In the First World War, Raeder's two younger brothers were both killed in action, and in 1919 his first marriage, which had been under heavy strain due to war-related stresses ended in divorce.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 ".

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Raeder's friends Trotha and Levetzow were not so lucky, both resigning rather than suffering the humiliation of a dishonourable discharge.

" One result of Raeder's efforts to indoctrinate the Kriegsmarine was to make a great many of his officers and men into Nazi fanatics.

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.

Raeder's strong authoritarian tendencies came to the fore as soon he assumed command of the Reichsmarine in 1928 when he sent out a circular making clear that dissent would not be allowed while at the same time carrying out the " great seal hunt " of 1928-29 when Raeder forced most of the senior admirals into early retirement in order to promote men who were loyal to him.

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

Owing to the shortage of surface vessels, Raeder's strategy was very much a guerre de course strategy that he reluctantly followed because the U-boats were the only offensive weapons at his disposal.

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.

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.

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.

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.