ERICH RAEDER
(Erich Johann Albert Raeder)
Military men tend to rely so much on military history that they are almost always fighting the last war. Soon air power would supplant sea power as the critical factor. Then nuclear power, and then nuclear weapons became too severe for actual use and yet wars still continued with no consensus as to that will be in the future.
Erich Johann Albert Raeder was a German admiral who played a major role in the naval history of World War II. Raeder attained the highest possible naval rank, that of Grand Admiral, in 1939, becoming the first person to hold that rank since Henning von Holtzendorff. Raeder led the Kriegsmarine for the first half of the war; he resigned in January 1943 and was replaced by Karl Dönitz. At the Nuremberg Trials he was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released early owing to failing health.
