* 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.

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.

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 ”.

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.

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.

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.

Together with Göring, Raeder were the only ones present who did not object to Hitler's plans for aggression in Eastern Europe.

Raeder later claimed when on trial for his life at Nuremberg that the Hossbach conference was a flight of fancy on Hitler's part that nobody took seriously, and he did not object because there was nothing to object to.

Though Raeder had promised to join the campaign to reinstate Fritsch as Army Commander if he was acquitted, after Fritsch ’ s trial ended, he reneged on his promise, and instead argued that the Fritsch case was an Army matter that did not concern him, through that had not stopped Raeder from demanding that Fritsch resign when he first learned of the allegations of homosexuality.

The desire to use Norway as a base for naval attacks on Britain was the primary reason that motivated Raeder to advocate attacking Norway, and only in early 1940 did Raeder first mention protecting the sea lanes that allowed Swedish iron ore to reach Germany as a secondary reason for occupying Norway.

Raeder thought Hitler was so fixated on wiping out the Soviet regime that he did not realise that a larger, global strategy could easily have tipped the balance in Germany's favour.

Raeder told Hitler on 14 January 1943 that he could not preside over the scrapping of the capital ships, and informed the Führer of his wish to resign as of 30 January 1943 rather than carry out a policy that he did not believe in.

Raeder described his relations with Dönitz as very poor, saying that Dönitz's " somewhat conceited and not always tactful nature did not appeal to me ".

Raeder formally asked the International Military Tribunal to be executed by firing squad instead, only to be informed that the Tribunal did not have the powers to change its sentence.

Raeder for his part did not believe he was guilty of anything, and he rejected Casalis's attempts to save his soul.

Admiral Gottfried Hanson, head of the Verband deutscher Soldaten veterans ' group in a letter in support of Raeder sent to the three western high commissioners ' for Germany declared: " As a friend of many years ' standing, and certain that all ex-members of the Navy will agree with me, I venture to say that no military leader could had educated and influenced his subordinates from a higher moral and Christian level than did Raeder ... both as a man and a Christian ... How can genuine peace and real understanding among the nations of the occident be brought about ... if true right and justice is not applied to the Germans that are still be kept prisoners?

However, Raeder and the Navy failed to press for naval air power until the war began, mitigating the Luftwaffe's responsibility.

Raeder led the Kriegsmarine ( German Navy ) for the first half of the war ; he resigned in 1943 and was replaced by Karl Dönitz.

For the puritanical Raeder, the divorce was a huge personal disgrace, and as a result for the rest of his life, he always denied his first marriage.

Coming as the same time as the defeat in the First World War, and the High Seas Fleet mutiny of 1918 which toppled the German monarchy, both of which were very traumatic events for Raeder, the years 1918-1919 were some of the most troubled in his life.

For Raeder as for other naval officers, the defeat of 1918 was especially humiliating because under the charismatic leadership of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the Naval State Secretary from 1897-1917, the Navy had been promoted as the service which would give Germany the " world power status " that her leaders craved, and to that end, vast sums of money had been spent in the Anglo-German naval race before 1914.

After the war, in 1920, Raeder was involved in the failed Kapp Putsch where together with almost the entire naval officer corps he declared himself openly for the " government " of Wolfgang Kapp against the leaders of the Weimar Republic, which Raeder loathed.

As the right-hand man to Admiral Adolf von Trotha, the Navy's commander, Raeder played a prominent role in rallying support for the putsch.

Raeder claimed to be ignorant of the plans for a putsch, but in the days preceding the putsch, Trotha and Raeder had been in close contact with General Walther von Lüttwitz ( the real leader of the Kapp putsch ) and the Freikorps leader Captain Hermann Ehrhardt.

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.

After the failure of the Kapp putsch he was marginalized in the Navy, being transferred to the Naval Archives, where for two years he played a leading role in the writing of the Official History of the Navy in World War I. Raeder also was the author of a number of studies about naval warfare, something that resulted in his being awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree honoris causa by the University of Kiel.

As a close protégé of Tirpitz, Raeder followed his lead in arguing for a battleship-centric “ balanced fleet ” meant to win the Entscheidungsschlacht in the North Sea.

Raeder and Wegener were once friends, having began their careers as ensigns in 1894 abroad the cruiser Deutschland, but their differing concepts of future strategy turned them into the most bitter of enemies, and the two officers were to spent much of the 1920s waging a war in print over what the Navy should or should not had done in the First World War and what were the correct lessons of the recent conflict for the future.

In private, Raeder often fumed against the Social Democrats for playing " party politics " with the naval budget as he deemed their opposition to navalism, and which was incensed that the S. P. D were against even building up the Navy to the levels allowed by the Treaty of Versailles.

For Raeder, convinced as he was that sea power was the key to national greatness to merely sit back and wait for the politicians to come understand the importance of sea power was never an option, and hence his non-stop lobbying for a bigger naval budget.

As a sign of his thinking for the future, all of the war plans that Raeder drew up from 1929 onwards for war in the future assumed that the Navy would go to war with regular capital ships instead of the " pocket battleships ".

Raeder used that assessment to argue for more spending on the Navy.

Heydrich later became chief of the SD, and he sought revenge for his disgrace by engaging in petty harassment of Raeder.

Raeder only supported the " pocket battleships " as a way of keeping German shipyards busy and as the only way of improving the naval budget until such time as Germany would overthrow the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, and start building capital ships that Versailles had outlawed.

Destroyer War Badge () is a German military decoration instituted on June 4, 1940 by admiral Erich Raeder and awarded to officers and crew for the service on Kriegsmarine destroyers ( worn on the lower part of the left breast pocket of the naval service tunic, underneath the 1st class Iron Cross if awarded, or equivalent grade award ).

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.

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.

" 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.

At the same time, Raeder submitted a memo to Hitler complaining that Plan Z fleet was not large enough, and instead called for an expanded Plan Z fleet of 80 battleships, 15-20 carriers, 100 heavy cruisers, 115 light cruisers, 500 U-boats, and 250 destroyers.

By early 1942, Raeder and Dönitz were openly feuding with each other, with Dönitz mocking Raeder's obsession with " dinosaurs ", as Dönitz called battleships, and Raeder complaining of Dönitz's massive ego and his tendency to run the U-boat arm as it were his own private navy.

Dönitz harboured enormous resentment against Raeder for starving the U-boat arm of funds before the war in order to concentrate on building battleships.