Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich

Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich (1876–1960),German naval officer who was appointed the German Navy's C-in-C in October 1928 with the rank of admiral, a position he retained until January 1943.

Raeder's immediate ambitions were to build a fleet on a parity with France's, and eventually one to challenge the other major maritime powers. The construction of three Panzerschiffe (pocket battleships) was begun—the first was launched in 1931—and 14 months after Hitler came to power, an event Raeder welcomed, Raeder was not only proposing to build, by 1949, a fleet which included 8 pocket battleships, 3 aircraft carriers, and 72 U-boats, but persuaded Hitler to increase the tonnage and armourment of two Panzerschiffe then on order (they became the battle-cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst).

Hitler's repudiation of the Versailles settlement in March 1935, followed by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that June, resurrected Germany as a naval power. By then a battleship and an aircraft carrier (never completed) had already been ordered and in the autumn of 1935 Captain Dönitz was given command of the first submarine flotilla. But Raeder failed to develop any long-term strategy; decisions on the naval construction programme were ‘not based on a detailed, structurally well-thought-out plan’ ( W. Deist, et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 1, Oxford, 1990, p. 471); and, to gain Göring's support for the diversion of more resources to implement the Z-plan (see Germany Table 11), Raeder shelved plans for an independent air arm.

On 27 January 1939 Hitler signed the directive to divert the necessary resources to the Z-plan and by April, when Raeder was promoted grand admiral, it seemed his goal of building a world-class fleet was attainable. But in September 1939, when the gap between Raeder's grandiose plans and reality had never been wider, Germany entered a war Hitler had assured Raeder would not occur until 1944, and Raeder concluded that his ships ‘would only be able to show that they know how to die with honour’ (ibid., p. 480).

The circumstances forced Raeder to resort to stop-gap measures and short-term policies from which the navy was never able to extricate itself. Apart from U-boats, all new naval construction virtually ceased. But his strategy of neutralizing British naval superiority by attacking the UK's commercial sea lanes on a global basis with his auxiliary cruisers was fairly successful at first, and Hitler heeded his advice to occupy Norway—achieved at a considerable cost to the navy—and not to invade the UK (see SEALION). But Raeder's rivalry with Göring left his forces without adequate air reconnaissance or a proper mine-laying capability, and he could not persuade Hitler that an Axis victory in the battle for the Mediterranean was a preferable option to BARBAROSSA, for Raeder vehemently opposed invading the USSR while the UK remained undefeated.

In the battle of the Atlantic Raeder's U-boats gave a handsome return for the resources they absorbed, but the operational results of the larger German surface raiders were less impressive, and after Bismarck was sunk in May 1941 Hitler ordered their withdrawal from the Atlantic and put restrictions on their use. Their redeployment in Norwegian waters threatened the Arctic convoys, but when the pocket battleship Lützow and the cruiser Admiral Hipper failed to destroy a convoy in December 1942, Hitler demanded the decommissioning of all major German surface forces. Raeder's resignation, and his appointment as the Navy's inspector-general, followed. His parting words to Hitler were: ‘Protect the interests of the Navy, and my successor, against Göring.’ He was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials, but was released in 1956.

Bibliography

Howarth, S. (ed.), Men of War (London, 1993).