,
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 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
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
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 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.
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
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. (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 and were sent on a successful
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. In April 1941, Raeder planned to follow up the success of
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenaus commerce-raiding mission with an even larger mission involving a battleship, two battlecruisers and a heavy cruiser under the command of
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 and were sent out on the mission, which ended with
Bismarcks sinking. The debacle almost saw the end of using capital ships against merchant shipping. 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" 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
Keitel and Reichsmarschall
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.
Resignation , 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
Lützow and lacked fighting spirit, according to
Albert Speer. The reorganisation fitted Speer's goal of working more closely with Dönitz. ==Post-war==