Erich Raeder

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Image:Raeder 2 1.jpg Erich Johann Albert Raeder (April 24, 1876—November 6, 1960) was a naval leader in Nazi Germany during World War II. Raeder attained the high rank of Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) in 1939, becoming the first person to hold that rank in wartime since Alfred von Tirpitz. Raeder led the Kriegsmarine (War Navy) for the first half of World War II but was eventually demoted and replaced by Karl Dönitz in 1942. He was sentenced to life in prison during the Nuremberg Trials, but was later released and wrote his autobiography. Raeder died in 1960.

Raeder was born in a middle-class family in Wandsbek, one of seven districts of the City of Hamburg, Germany. His father was a headmaster. He joined the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in 1894 and rapidly rose in rank, becoming Chief of Staff for Franz von Hipper in 1912. He served in this position during World War I as well as in combat posts, taking part in the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 and the Battle of Jutland in 1916. After the war Raeder continued to rise steadily in the navy hierarchy, becoming a Rear Admiral (Konteradmiral) in 1922 and a Vice Admiral (Vizeadmiral) in 1925. In October 1928 Raeder was promoted to Admiral and made Commander in Chief of the Reichsmarine, the Weimar Republic Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Reichsmarine).

Although he generally disliked the Nazi party, he strongly supported Adolf Hitler's attempt to rebuild the Kriegsmarine, while apparently disagreeing equally strongly on most other matters. On 20 April 1936, just a few days before Raeder's sixtieth birthday, Hitler presented him with a rank of General Admiral (Generaladmiral). In his quest to rebuild the German Navy, Raeder faced constant challenges from Hermann Göring's ongoing quest to build the Luftwaffe.

Nevertheless he was promoted to Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) in 1939, and later that year suggested Operation Weserübung, the invasions of Denmark and Norway in order to secure sheltered docks out of reach of the Royal Air Force, as well as provide direct exits into the North Sea. These operations were eventually successfully carried out, although with relatively heavy losses. The Nazis had taken over a heavy water plant in Norway in preparation for building a nuclear device.

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Raeder was not a supporter of the Operation Sealion, the planned German invasion of the British Isles. He felt that the war at sea could be conducted far more successfully via an indirect strategic approach, by increasing the numbers of U-boats and small surface vessels in service. This, in addition to a strategic focus on the Mediterranean theater including a strong German presence in North Africa, plus an invasion of Malta and the Middle East.

He argued strongly against Operation Sealion because of his doubts about a decisive German air superiority over the English Channel and the lack of regional German naval superiority. Air superiority was prerequisite to counter the expected catastrophic harassment of the German invasion force by the Royal Air Force.

Since such requirements were not met, the invasion was postponed indefinitely due to the Luftwaffe's failure to obtain air superiority during the Battle of Britain. Instead the German war machine was diverted to Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of Soviet Union, which he vigorously opposed.

A series of failed operations after that point, combined with the outstanding success of the U-boat fleets under the command of Karl Dönitz led to his eventual demotion to the rank of Admiral Inspector of the Kriegsmarine in January of 1943, and eventually to resignation and retirement in May of 1943. Karl Dönitz succeeded him in the post of the Commander in Chief of the Navy on 30 January 1943.

After the war he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials, for waging a "war of aggression". This much criticized sentence was later reduced, and due to ill health he was released on 26 September 1955, later writing an autobiography, Mein Leben in 1957. Erich Raeder died in Kiel, on 6 November 1960.

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Raeder's Grand Strategy for Victory

After the conquest of France, Germany should send a force to invade Egypt to capture the Suez Canal. With the capture of Egypt and the Suez Canal, all of Southeastern Europe would have no choice but to submit to Hitler's rule.
Once the Suez Canal was captured, the way would have been open to the Panzers to overrun Palestine, Transjordan, Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Iran. This would have given Germany virtually unlimited supplies of the resource that it needed most: oil. With the capture of much of the Middle East, Turkey would have no choice but to submit to Hitler's rule. With all of the Middle East under German rule, the importance of Malta and Gibraltar would have diminished. Eventually, without bloodshed, both would surrender to German rule.
Since the Soviet Union's major oil fields were just north of Iran, Germany could quickly invade the Caucasus and get hold of the primary source of Russian oil. But with just the fact that Germany could invade through Iran as well as through Poland, Stalin would have been obligated to provide Germany everything it needed: from additional troops to the control of all of Russia west of the Urals.
Since Iran is near to India, Hitler could have invaded the Crown Jewel in the British Empire and united with the developing Japanese Empire in the east. But the fact that Germany was just a doorstep away from their most prized possession, the Brtish would had have no choice but to make peace with Germany.
Once in possession of the Middle East, all of North and West Africa and of Europe west of Russia, its armed forces virtually intact, its economy able to exploit the resources of three continents, Germany would be virtually invincible. As for the United States, it would have no hope of launching the invasion of Europe against an undefeated and waiting Germany until it had spent years building a vast invasion force, which would include everthing necessary for the invasion of Europe to succeed from the best guns to the best boats. It's certain that the United States would take on this task, but the chances of the invasion succeeding would have been extremely small; far more likely, the Americans would have decided to leave Germany alone and counter the expansion of Japan in the Pacific. Meanwhile, Germany could consolidate its empire and grow more powerful in every sense every day. Before long, the world would have grown accustomed to Hitler's Empire and insist on a return to normal international trade. At last, the dream of a Thousand Year Reich could finally be realized.

Unfortunatly for Nazi Germany, Hitler didn't agree with Raeder's plan and Hitler embarked on a course that would result in Germany's defeat in World War II.

1. A more critical view of this strategy, however, shows that this might not have been quite so simple as all of that. While it is quite tempting to argue that Germany could have sent more troops to Africa to seize Egypt and the Suez Canal, one must remember that the Afrika Korps had enough difficulty being supplied without adding another large mass of troops into the mix -- every bit of fuel or ammunition used had to be loaded onto Italian bottoms, cross the Mediterranean, be unloaded, and then loaded onto trucks to get to the troops in the field. The trucks burned a great amount of the fuel they were supposed to be transporting, and the further Rommel got away from the ports, the worse of a problem this was. Even transporting supplies across the Mediterranean was difficult enough: one of Rommel's letters to his wife and son dated 23 April 1941 reads:

"How are you both? There must be masses of mail lying on the bottom of the Mediterranean."

The expectation that once Egypt has fallen, the rest of Southeastern Europe has fallen seems to have very little historical evidence in its backing.

2. Britain's Middle Eastern posessions were garrisoned by a large number of troops -- mostly infantry, to be sure, with some artillery, but by no means a pushover. Further, while much is made of the large Middle Eastern oil deposits (especially in 2006), what one must realize is that the large oil fields had not yet been discovered, and would not be discovered until after the war: the Middle East was not a significant oil producing power during the Second World War. Even presupposing that Germany could invade and locate the oil, they would still have to establish the pipelines and infrastructure to transport the oil, a task that would take some time and would be quite vulnerable to Allied counter-attack.

3. The supposition that one only needs must move troops close enough to the Soviet border in order to threaten Stalin so much that he will immediately capitulate is a strange one, given that historically, German troops managed to move troops right to the outskirts of Moscow without a surrender taking place. Far more likely, Stalin, realizing that Hitler has moved a large portion of the German Army south, declares that everybody in the first Soviet tank to enter Berlin will become a Hero of the Soviet Union. Further, declaring that you can easily attack northwards through a mountain range and into the Soviet Union is dubious, at best.

4. It is interesting to note that India has, along its northern border, a very large mountain range, a mountain range so tall that it includes Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the entire world. Mountains, again, are not terrain well-suited for quick victory, and India itself was garrisoned with a large number of Indian troops. Nor did Japan ever come particularly close to managing to pull off an invasion and 'linking up'. Also, the further one gets away from ones support base, the more difficult waging war becomes, not the other way around. Great Britain did not surrender when England was under threat of bombing, with troops just across the English channel, and there is little reason to believe that the threat of a colonial posession being invaded would cause its immediate capitulation.

5. One must remember that historically, the United States did indeed manage to not only fight off Japan (with respect to the British and Australian troops in southeast Asia, the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy was largely an American affair), but build up troops to join in on a successful invasion of Europe. Further, the invasion of Europe would have been made considerably easier by the American development of the atomic bomb, and bombers capable of delivering payloads to cities in Europe -- both of which were actually historically built.

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Sources

Alexander, Bevin (2000). How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80844-3
Heckmann, Wolf (1981). Rommel's War in Africa (translated from the third corrected edition, Rommels Krieg in Afrika), Doubleday. ISBN 1-56852-041-7

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