A Nazi German naval commander who pursued a grand surface fleet
In the 1940 planning for Operation Sea Lion, control of the English Channel and the vulnerability of invasion transport exposed the German navy’s fundamental weakness.
Erich Raeder was an admiral who rose through the Imperial German Navy and went on to command the navies of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He pursued a battleship-centered ocean fleet combined with commerce raiding, although Germany’s navy was unready to confront the Royal Navy when the Second World War began. Raeder was skeptical of Operation Sea Lion in 1940, pointing to German weakness in controlling the English Channel and the vulnerability of an invasion transport, and those naval limits constrained the plan’s feasibility. At the postwar International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, he was convicted of conspiracy, crimes against peace, and war crimes, sentenced to life imprisonment, and released in 1955.
Career Timeline
- 1894Entered the Imperial German Navy
- 1912–1918Senior naval staff officer; served in the First World War
- 1928–1935Chief of the Naval Command, Reichsmarine
- 1935–1939Commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine; Generaladmiral
- 1939–1943Grand Admiral and commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine
- 1943Resigned as commander-in-chief and retired
- 1946–1955Convicted at Nuremberg and served a life sentence