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 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 ".

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.

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 ".

The Canadian naval historian, Commander Kenneth Hansen wrote that Raeder in devising the idea of a task force of different types of ships was a more forward-looking and innovative officer than he was usually credited with being.

The German historian Jost Dülffer wrote that Raeder would have been better off in preparing the Z Plan with following the advice of Commander Hellmuth Heye who had advocated in a 1938 paper a guerre-de-course strategy of Kreuzerkrieg ( cruiser war ) in which groups of Panzerschiffe and submarines would attack British convoys or Karl Dönitz who also advocated a guerre-de-course strategy of using " wolf-packs " of submarines to attack British commerence.

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.

The American historians ' Williamson Murray and Alan Millet wrote about Raeder's thinking about Norway: "... since fall 1939, Admiral Raeder had advocated an aggressive policy toward Scandinavia to protect ore shipments and to establish naval bases in the area.

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.

General Franz Halder after reading some of Raeder's memos wrote in his diary of " navalism run amuck " and commented that Raeder and other admirals that: " These people dream in continents ".

In the Seekriegsleitung war diary, Raeder wrote that the executions of the Royal Marines were something " new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms ".

The American historian Keith Bird wrote that Raeder seemed " uncomfortable " with the Commando Order, but nonetheless enforced it.

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.

The American historian Norman Goda wrote that Maxwell Fyfe and the American prosecutor Telford Taylor tore Raeder to pieces on the stand for his statements.

Goda wrote that Raeder by his own testimony disproved his own claims to have been an apolitical professional who was against the Nazi regime, and instead established that he was an anti-Semite who willingly served the Nazi regime because of his hatred for Jews.

The American historian Norman Goda wrote that Raeder's champions usually spoke if aggression against Norway was the only thing that Raeder had been convicted of, and that campaign to free Raeder rested upon "... a quasi-legal argument mixed with moral equivalency and wilful ignorance ".

After the captured Royal Marines were executed by a naval firing squad in Bordeaux, the the Commander of the Navy Admiral Erich Raeder wrote in the Seekriegsleitung war diary that the executions of the Royal Marines were something " new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms ".

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.

After the Royal Marines were executed by a naval firing squad, the Commander of the Navy Admiral Erich Raeder wrote in the Seekriegsleitung war diary that the executions of the captured Royal Marines were something " new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms ".

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.

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

With the prospect of the Channel ports falling under Kriegsmarine ( German Navy ) control and attempting to anticipate the obvious next step that might entail, Grand Admiral ( Großadmiral ) Erich Raeder ( head of the Kriegsmarine ) instructed his operations officer, Kapitän Hans Jürgen Reinicke, to draw up a document examining " the possibility of troop landings in England should the future progress of the war make the problem arise.

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

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.

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.

Raeder testified that he had frequently violated the Versailles treaty, but denied any intention of aggressive war.

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 ".

For the present, the first war plan that Raeder drew up in January 1929 stated that there was nothing that the Reichsmarine could do to stop a French fleet from entering the Baltic.

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.

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.

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 ".

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 ).

To support the planned global war on the high seas against Britain, Raeder planned to get around the problems posed by the lack of bases outside of Germany by instructing naval architects to increase the range and endurance of German warships and build supply ships to re-supply German raiders on the high seas.

Raeder supported the idea of aggression against Poland, but on 31 March 1939 the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had announced the “ guarantee " of Poland, by which Britain would go to war against any nation that attempted to end Polish independence.

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.

When asked by his entry in the war diary that seemed to criticise the shootings at Bordeaux, Raeder stated that he was not protesting against the executions per se, but was instead protesting that the shootings had been done by the Kriegsmarine, arguing that the local naval commanders should have handed over the British POWs to the SD to be shot.

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.

* 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.

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.

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.