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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 ).
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Raeder and contended
Dülffer contended that either option were both less expensive, would take less time and more achievable given German resources than the Z Plan which Raeder chose.
Raeder and Hitler
* 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.
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.
Raeder and on
Felmy pressed this case firmly throughout 1938 and 1939, and, on 31 October 1939, Großadmiral Erich Raeder sent a strongly worded letter to Göring in support of such proposals.
This ultimately placed responsibility for Sea Lion's success squarely on the shoulders of Raeder and Göring, neither of whom had the slightest enthusiasm for the venture and, in fact, did little to hide their opposition to it.
Another major influence on Raeder was his close friend Admiral Adolf von Trotha who had commanded the " Detached Division " of the Navy before 1914 and often taken the " Detached Division " on long voyages into the Atlantic.
Trotha told Raeder that one German raider on the open seas would force the British to deploy 10-15 warships to hunt it down.
As soon as they learned that Berlin had been occupied by Marinebrigade Ehrhardt on the morning of 13 March 1920, Trotha and Raeder issued a proclamation declaring that the Weimar Republic had ended, declared their loyalty to Kapp " government ", and ordered the Navy to seize Wilhelmshaven and Kiel for the putsch.
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.
Raeder used that assessment to argue for more spending on the Navy.
In war plans that Raeder drew up in 1931-32 stated that the Reichsmarine would start a war with an surprise attack on the Polish naval base of Gdynia that was intended to destroy the Polish Navy and would then attack French ships in the North Sea before they could enter the Baltic.
As a devout Lutheran who as captain of the Cöln in World War I personally conducted services on the deck of his cruiser, Raeder sought to make Christianity a great part of the lives of his men as possible.
Raeder made it clear to his officers that he wanted them to be model Christian gentlemen, and that an officer who did not attend church on a regular basis would have little chance of promotion under his leadership.
This incident received much sensationalized and exaggerated press coverage in Germany where it was claimed that an attempted mutiny had occurred on the Emden, and which Raeder apparently took more seriously than he did the reports from his own officers.
From these, Raeder believed that Communists were seeking a mutiny, and he spent the next years on a " witch-hunt " for Communists in the Navy, giving a dishonourable discharge to any sailor who had an association with the KPD.
In 1932, when the Navy's chief chaplain, Pastor Friedrich Ronneberger urged in his sermons that everyone pray for Hitler's victory in the presidential election that spring, Raeder sent him a letter remaining him that the Navy was supposed to be neutral on political issues, and asking him to keep his political opinions out of his sermons.
At a speech on 1 April 1933, Raeder expressed his support for " the government of the National Revolution " which he hoped would " lead a unified people, thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the great chancellor to new heights ".
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.
Raeder believed that the attacks on Christianity were the work of a few radicals in the N. S. D. A. P.
A close protégé of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Raeder focused all of his efforts on rebuilding the High Seas Fleet that had scuttled itself at Scapa Flow in 1919.
For Raeder, the bigger the battleship the better, and throughout his tenure as a Commander-in-Chief, Raeder was forever pressuring naval architects to design bigger and bigger battleships ; by 1937, Raeder was planning on building 100, 000-ton battleships.
Raeder and one
For Raeder, the idea that all of the suffering and sacrifice of the Great War, which had affected him personally was all in vain was unthinkable, and he become obsessed with making certain that Germany would one day obtain the " world power status " that the Reichs leaders had sought, but failed to achieve in the Great War.
In the 1920s, Raeder as one of the authors of the official history of the German Navy in World War I, he sided with Tirpitz against the Jeune École-inspired theories of Wegener, arguing that everything that his mentor Tirpitz did was correct, and dismissed the strategy of guerre de course as a “ dangerous delusion ”.
In a report in November 1932, Raeder stated he needed umbau ( rebuilding ) programme of one aircraft carrier, six cruisers, six destroyer flotillas, sixteen U-boats and six battleships to allow Germany to control both the Baltic and North Seas.
Raeder took the view that the Navy should be " one family " with himself as the stern, but loving father figure, and the sailors as his " children ", from whom he expected unconditional obedience.
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.
The status of chaplains within the Navy were one of the few areas where Raeder did resist the attempts of the NSDAP in an aggressive manner, making it clear that his absolute opposition to introducing Nazi neo-paganism into the Navy, and that he would never tolerate neo-pagan rituals in the Navy.
At the same time, Raeder worked to promote National Socialist ideology as opposed to the NSDAP in the Navy, ordering in September 1936 that all officers read a tract by Kriegsmarine Commander Siegfried Sorge called Der Marineoffizier about what it took to be a good officer., Sorge had claimed that one could not be a good naval officer without believing in National Socialist values.
In the same way, the sexually conservative Raeder who had a very strong dislike of homosexuality was one of the loudest who called for the resignation of the Army commander Werner von Fritsch when he learned that he had been accused of homosexuality, through Raeder qualified this that Fritsch should be reappointed Army commander if the charges were proven to be false.
Raeder's traditional Anglophobia, which always led him to view Britain as the main enemy and together the chance for increased naval building represented by the anti-British turn made Raeder into one of the strongest supporters of the anti-British foreign policy.
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 naval staff hoped to gain a success to influence postwar budget debates ... Since Raeder had already discussed with Hitler on 20 May the possibility of invading Britain, such a waste of German naval strength off the North Cape counts as one of the most egregious naval misjudgements of the war.
" Before sending Admiral Wilhelm Marschall out in Operation Juno, Raeder told him: " We must engage the enemy in battle, even if this should cost us one of the battleships.
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 ".
At that point, Admiral Lütjens advised cancelling the operation as having one battleship with only one heavy cruiser in support operating alone in the Atlantic was too risky, but was overruled by Raeder who insisted on going ahead.
Despite Rheinübung and the damaging attack on the Lützow, in July 1941 Raeder began planning for what he called " the battle of the Atlantic ", a plan to send every single warship in the Kriegsmarine into the Atlantic to take on the Royal Navy in one colossal battle that almost certainly result in the destruction of the German force, but would hopefully make the British victory a Pyrrhic one.
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