Raiding Forces waters of the Baltic and North Seas Raeder lacked political or smooth personal qualities and failed to persuade Hitler to adopt proposals for a front rank surface fleet Instead of accepting Raeder’s proposal for a complex but integrated surface battlefleet, Hitler agreed to the compromise Z-Plan (or Ziel Plan) in 1938, which also committed to deployment of a large U-boat fleet Over time, Raeder compromised not only his maritime vision but every professional and moral scruple he had about the new regime That fact has been concealed about him too often—and about the Kriegsmarine and wider Wehrmacht in general—by postwar revisionism based on duplicitous memoirs and oral histories that insisted the naval service was scrupulously professional and nonideological and waged a “clean war” on the high seas Raeder was in command during the opening phase of the Battle of the Atlantic He urged Hitler to wage an all-out naval war to strangle Britain, even if it brought the United States into the war as it had in 1917 Raeder was one of the few top Wehrmacht commanders to share Hitler’s view that Britain rather than France was the main enemy in the west, and to oppose BARBAROSSA—not on principled grounds, but because he wanted to defeat the Royal Navy first Raeder had some early success with surface raiding by auxiliary cruisers, but he could never overcome Hitler’s fundamental ignorance of naval warfare or his loathing of losing surface ships even when exchanged at a favorable ratio for enemy merchantmen Nor could Raeder win against Royal Navy determination to rid the seas of German surface raiders Raeder was forced out of the top command in favor of Karl Dönitz, who immediately shifted to an all U-boat effort from January 1943 Raeder left behind a naval service that never succeeded in providing Hitler with the crucial strategic advantage over the Royal Navy, a fact that was critical to overall German failure in World War II Raeder was given a life sentence by the Nuremberg Tribunal but served only nine years in Spandau prison due to ill health See also WESERÜBUNG Suggested Reading: Kenneth Bird, Erich Raeder: Admiral of the Third Reich (2006) RAF See Royal Air Force (RAF) RAIDER BATTALIONS Several battalions of U.S Marine Corps special forces that conducted lightning raids, landed on unlikely beaches, and carried out sabotage missions behind enemy lines They first landed on Guadalcanal in 1942 In 1944 they were converted to regular marine infantry RAIDING FORCES Britain special forces that conducted penetration raids in the desert campaigns, the Balkan campaign, and the Dodecanese campaign Greek commandos of the Sacred Band were attached to the Raiding Forces command in February 1944 889