Editing Erich Raeder (section)

==World War II==
{{main|Erich Raeder during World War II}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H12262, Nürnberg, Reichsparteitag, Tag der Wehrmacht.jpg|thumb|[[Erhard Milch]], [[Wilhelm Keitel]], [[Walther von Brauchitsch]], Raeder and [[Maximilian von Weichs]] at the 1938 [[Nuremberg Rally]]]]

Raeder believed the navy was unprepared for the start of World War II by at least five years. The surface fleet was inadequate to fight the [[Royal Navy]] and instead adopted a strategy of convoy raiding. Raeder wanted the Kriegsmarine to play an active part because he feared the budget would be cut after the war. The smaller ships were dispersed around the world in order to force the Royal Navy to disperse their ships to combat them, while the battleships would carry out raids in the [[North Sea]], with a view towards gradually reducing the Royal Navy's strength at home.

Raeder was unhappy with the outcome of the [[Battle of the River Plate]] and believed that [[Hans Langsdorff]] should not have scuttled the ship, but instead sailed out to engage the Royal Navy. Fleet commander [[Hermann Boehm (admiral)|Hermann Boehm]] was held responsible and was sacked by Raeder, who also issued orders that ships were to fight until the last shell and either win or sink with their flags flying.

The Allies were using Norwegian airfields to transfer aircraft to the Finns fighting against the Soviets in the [[Winter War]], as well as [[Operation Wilfred|mining Norwegian waters]], and the Germans were alarmed by these developments. If the Allies were to use Norwegian naval bases or successfully mine Norwegian waters, they could cut off Germany's vital iron ore imports from Sweden and tighten the blockade of Germany. The Allies had made [[Plan R 4|plans to invade Norway and Sweden]] in order to cut off those iron ore shipments. Admiral [[Rolf Carls]], commander of the Kriegsmarine in the Baltic Sea region, proposed the invasion of Norway to Raeder in September 1939. Raeder briefed Hitler on the idea in October, but planning did not begin until December 1939. The operation was in low-priority planning until the [[Altmark incident|''Altmark'' incident]] in February 1940, during which a German tanker carrying 300 Allied prisoners in then-neutral Norwegian waters was boarded by sailors from a Royal Navy destroyer and the prisoners were freed. After this, plans for the Norwegian invasion took on a new sense of urgency. [[Operation Weserübung|The invasion]] proved costly for the Kriegsmarine, which lost a heavy cruiser, two of its six light cruisers, 10 of its 20 destroyers and six U-boats. In addition, almost all of the other capital ships were damaged and required dockyard repairs, and for a time the German surface fleet had only three light cruisers and four destroyers operational in the aftermath of the Norwegian campaign.

The swift victory over [[Battle of France|France]] allowed the Kriegsmarine to base itself in ports on France's west coast. This was strategically important as German warships would no longer have to navigate through the dangerous English Channel in order to return to friendly ports, as well as allow them to range farther out into the Atlantic to attack convoys. With the surrender of France, Raeder saw the opportunity to greatly enhance the navy's power by confiscating the ships of the French Navy and manning them with his crews. Hitler however, vetoed this idea, afraid that doing so would push the French navy to join the Royal Navy. British fears of Raeder's plan resulted in the [[Attack on Mers-el-Kébir]], in which the Royal Navy attacked the French navy despite being at peace with France.

[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101II-MW-0952-17, Frankreich, Auszeichnungen für U-99-Besatzung.jpg|thumb|Raeder with [[Otto Kretschmer]] (left), August 1940]]
On 11 July 1940, Hitler and Raeder agreed to continue building the battleships called for by [[Plan Z]]. Raeder also had bases built at [[Trondheim]] on the [[Norwegian Sea]] and at [[Saint-Nazaire]] and [[Lorient]] on the [[Bay of Biscay]]. At this time, Raeder and other senior officers began submitting memos to invade (among others) Shetland, Iceland, the Azores, Iran, Madagascar, Kuwait, Egypt and the Dutch East Indies.

In January 1941, the battlecruisers {{ship|German battlecruiser|Scharnhorst||2}} and {{ship|German battlecruiser|Gneisenau||2}} were sent on a successful [[Operation Berlin (Atlantic)|commerce-raiding mission]] in the Atlantic. On 18 March, following the beginning of [[Lend-Lease]], Raeder wanted to start firing on US warships even if unprovoked. He declined to invade the Azores because of the surface ship losses the previous year. Raeder urged Hitler to declare war on the United States throughout 1941 so the Kriegsmarine could begin sinking American warships escorting British convoys.<ref>Murray, Williamson & Millet, Alan A War to Be Won Fighting the Second World War, Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2000, {{ISBN|9780674006805}}., p. 248</ref>

In April 1941, Raeder planned to follow up the success of ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau''{{'}}s commerce-raiding mission with an even larger mission involving a battleship, two battlecruisers and a heavy cruiser under the command of [[Günther Lütjens|Lütjens]], codenamed [[Operation Rheinübung]]. The original plan was to have the battlecruisers ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Gneisenau'' involved in the operation, but ''Scharnhorst'' was undergoing heavy repairs to her engines, and ''Gneisenau'' had just suffered a damaging torpedo hit days before which put her out of action for six months. In the end only the {{ship|German battleship|Bismarck||2}} and {{ship|German cruiser|Prinz Eugen||2}} were sent out on the mission, which ended with ''Bismarck''{{'}}s sinking. The debacle almost saw the end of using capital ships against merchant shipping.{{Citation needed|date=August 2014}} Hitler was not pleased and saw the resources used in the construction and operation of the large ''Bismarck'' as a poor investment.

In late 1941, Raeder planned the [[Channel Dash|"channel dash"]] which sent the remaining two battleships in the French ports to Germany, for further operations in Norwegian waters. The plan was to threaten the Lend-Lease convoys to the Soviet Union, to deter an invasion of Norway, and to tie down elements of the Home Fleet that might otherwise have been used in the Atlantic against the U-boat wolfpacks.

After the [[attack on Pearl Harbor]] Raeder, along with Field Marshal [[Wilhelm Keitel|Keitel]] and Reichsmarschall [[Hermann Göring|Göring]], urged Hitler to immediately declare war on the United States in view of the US war plan [[Rainbow Five]], and to begin the U-boat attacks off the US east coast, which was later called the "[[Second Happy Time]]" by German submariners.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://ariwatch.com/Links/RainbowFive.htm |title=The Big Leak |access-date=17 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180818061220/http://ariwatch.com/Links/RainbowFive.htm |archive-date=18 August 2018 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Resignation===
{{main|Resignation and post-war life of Erich Raeder}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-H27590, Erich Raeder, Adolf Hitler retouched.jpg|thumb|Raeder with [[Adolf Hitler]], 1943]]
On 30 January 1943, following Hitler's outrage over the [[Battle of the Barents Sea]], [[Karl Dönitz]], the supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm, was promoted to grand admiral, and Raeder was named admiral inspector, a ceremonial office. Raeder had failed to inform Hitler of the battle, which Hitler learned about from the foreign press. Hitler thought the ''[[German cruiser Deutschland|Lützow]]'' and {{ship|German cruiser|Admiral Hipper||2}} lacked fighting spirit, according to [[Albert Speer]]. The reorganisation fitted Speer's goal of working more closely with Dönitz.<ref name="Speer">{{cite book|last1=Speer|first1=Albert|title=Inside the Third Reich|date=1995|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|location=London|isbn=978-1-84212-735-3|pages=374–375}}</ref>