Raeder came to fear that this debate was starting to sully the image of the Navy to such an extent that he would never convince anyone in power to fund the Navy again, and so took extraordinary steps in the late 1920s to end the debate by trying to silence all critics of Tirpitz.

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.

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.

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.

As much as possible, Raeder tried to avoid co-operation with the Army and the Air Force, and as such Germany never had a joint chiefs of staff or anything like during the war to prepare an coordianted strategy.

The authoritarian Raeder, who was not used to having his orders disobeyed, never forgave Dönitz.

More recently, the American journalist Patrick Buchanan in his 2008 book Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War defended Raeder, arguing that the real aggressor against Norway was Churchill, and Raeder should never been convicted at Nuremberg.

Hitler had an argument with Raeder over it and this was something Raeder never forgot.

Raeder testified in response to Maxwell Fyfe's question about his Heroes ' Day speech to his belief that starting in 1917 " International Jewry had destroyed the resistance of the German people ... and had gained an excessively large and oppressive influence in German affairs " and all of the anti-Semitic measures of the Nazi regime which presumably included genocide were merely just acts of German self-defence.

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.

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.

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.

On 11 July 1940 Raeder met with Hitler where it was agreed that the work on the H-class " super-battleships " envisioned in Plan Z of January 1939 that had been stopped at the outbreak of war in September 1939 should resume at once.

In January 1941, Raeder launched the successful Operation Berlin, where the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were sent out on a raid into the North Atlantic.

In April 1941, Raeder planned to follow up that success with Operation Rheinübung, where the Gneisenau, the Bismarck, the Admiral Hipper and the Prinz Eugen would be sent out on an extended raid into the North Atlantic under the command of Admiral Günther Lütjens.

Raeder himself was personally pleased by the sinking of the Bismarck, feeling this had won the Kriegsmarine some much needed glory on the high seas and was consistent with his goal of " full engagement " where the Kriegsmarine capital ships were to sent into action until they all were sunk to win his service glory, but Hitler was more than annoyed at the loss of the Bismarck.

At this time, some naval officers expressed the concern that the British were reading at least some of the naval codes as the Royal Navy seemed to have a suspicious ability to know where German ships were, but Raeder dismissed these concerns.

Raeder claimed that he had been " very indignant " about his government's claim that Britain had sunk the Athenia, which led Maxwell Fyfe to remark that he had done nothing to express that " indignation ", just as he claimed to have been angry about the false charges of homosexuality against Werner von Fritsch, where he had also done nothing after Fritsch had been cleared.

Erika Raeder was on the whole portrayed favourably in the West German press, where she was depicted as a victim of Allied injustice while as a reporter put it " where does Raeder's guilt lie?

In 1936, Raeder ordered a new class of support ships, the Dithmarschen-class ships which served as a combined oil tanker / supply ship / hospital ship / repair shop and could carry 9, 000 tons of fuel oil and 4, 000 tons of lubricating oil plus ammunition, water, spare parts and food.

Naval planners informed Raeder that the Z Plan fleet would require ten million cubic metres of storage to be built in order to supply enough oil to last a year.

Raeder also complained about the poor standard of aerial torpedoes, although their design was the Kriegsmarine's responsibility.

* 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.

Admiral Raeder was strongly opposed to Sea Lion since the almost entire Kriegsmarine surface fleet had been either sunk or badly damaged in Weserübung, and therefore his service was hopelessly outnumbered by the ships of the Royal Navy.

Erich Johann Albert Raeder ( 24 April 1876 – 6 November 1960 ) was a naval leader in Germany before and during World War II.

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

Raeder was born into a middle-class family in Wandsbek in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein in the German Empire.

Owning to his cold and distant personality, Raeder was a man whom even his friends often admitted to knowing very little about.

Raeder was the captain of Kaiser Wilhem II's private yacht in the years leading up to World War I.

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.

This marked the beginning of a long feud between Raeder and Wegener with Wegener claiming that his former friend Raeder was jealous of what Wegener insisted were his superior ideas.

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.

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.

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.

In October 1928, Raeder was promoted to Admiral and made Commander-in-Chief of the Reichsmarine, the Weimar Republic Navy ( Oberbefehlshaber der Reichsmarine ).

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 ”.

Tirpitz was greatly pleased by Raeder ’ s defence of his leadership and theories.

And in Tirpitz, who was still very influential in the Navy despite having retired in 1917 started to speak of Raeder as an ideal man to head the Navy.

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.

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

Right from the beginning when he assumed command of the Reichsmarine in 1928, Raeder waged a skilful public relations battle highly reminiscent of and closely modelled after the campaigns of Tirpitz in the early 20th century to convince both the politicians and the German public of the importance of sea power to Germany's future greatness.

In the early 1930s, Raeder fought hard for increased naval budgets, lobbying politicians incessantly to argue that a strong navy was the prerequisite for Germany to become a world power.

Raeder made it clear that the Navy would support whatever government that was in power.

Raeder was deeply hostile to the Weimar Republic, which he viewed as the work of the " internal enemy " responsible for the November Revolution of 1918 and defeat in World War I. Raeder believed that the necessary prerequisite for Germany to become a world power was the end of democracy.

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.

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.

Raeder was greatly dismayed by Hitler's criticism of Tirpitz and of the pre-1914 Anglo-German naval race, and of his statements that if he came to power, he would a reach an understanding with Britain, whereby Germany would " renounce " naval and colonial ambitions into exchange for British support of German ambitions in Eastern Europe.

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.

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.

The Canadian historian Holger Herwig wrote that for Raeder: " The ideal weapon with which to attain sea power remained the symmetrical battle fleet centred around the battleship ".

In a 1934 memo, Raeder stated spelled out why he considered sea power so important to Germany: " The scale of a nation's world power status is identical with its scale of sea power ".

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 ).