Raeder was not a radical anti-Semite along Nazi lines , but he shared the widespread anti-Semitic prejudices of most German conservatives of the time , viewing Jews as an alien element who were corrupting the otherwise pure German '' Volk '' . In 1934 , when a veteran of the Imperial Navy who was working as a Prussian civil servant , whose job was threatened because his " non-Aryan " status wrote to Raeder for his help , Raeder replied that he could not intervene in a civilian matter . At the same time , Raeder received a letter from an engineer named Dekow who complained that he had been sacked from his job at Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel in 1929 because of his membership in the N.S.D.A.P , Raeder replied that he would do everything in his power to help Dekow provided that Dekow provided proof that he was an especially distinguished " Old Fighter " ; Dekow provided the evidence and duly received back his job . In February 1934 the Defence Minister Werner von Blomberg , on his own initiative , had all of the Jews serving in the '' Reichswehr '' and '' Reichsmarine '' given an automatic and immediate dishonourable discharge . Like the Army , the Navy had an unofficial policy long before 1933 of refusing to accept Jews as officers , and of refusing to accept Jews in any capacity as much as possible so the numbers affected by Blomberg 's order were very small . Most of the men who were discharged did not practice Judaism as a religion , but since Blomberg defined Jews as a " race " , the discharged were mostly either Jewish converts to Christianity or sons of converts to Christianity . As a result , 74 Jewish soldiers and sailors lost their jobs for no other reason than they were considered Jewish . To create a " Jew-free " Navy , Raeder dishonourably discharged three officers , four officer candidates , three NCOs and four sailors . The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service had excluded those Jews who were World War I veterans , so Blomberg 's discharge order was going beyond what was asked of him in promoting anti-Semitism . Raeder made no protest against Blomberg 's order , and instead worked with dispatch to carry it out . Raeder accepted without complaint orders from von Blomberg on 21 May 1935 that those who were of " non-Aryan descent " would not be permitted to join the Wehrmacht and all members of the Wehrmacht could only marry women of pure " Aryan descent " and another order from Blomberg in July 1935 saying no member of the Wehrmacht could buy from a store owned by " non-Aryans " under any conditions . At the same time , Raeder fought Blomberg 's attempts to have officers who were '' Mischling '' or were married to '' Mischling '' dishonourably discharged . Raeder 's biographer , Keith Bird , wrote about Raeder 's anti-Semitism : " Raeder 's adoption of Nazi racial epithets , reflective of the assimilation of the tenets of National Socialism in the Wehrmacht , indicate his ongoing readiness to interpret and moderate Hitler 's policies and ideology and assimilate them into his own Pan-German conservative world-view . By intermingling them with the ideology of the late nineteenth century Bismarckian century , he could more easily accept them . At his Nuremberg trial , reflecting the traditional anti-Semitic bias of the German middle class and naval officers of his generation , he argued that after the experience of 1917 and 1918 , " International Jewry " had " gained an excessively large and oppressive influence in German affairs " , and " one could not be surprised that the National Socialist government tried to loosen and , as far as possible remove this large and oppressive influence . " Although Raeder was not anti-Semitic in the virulent National Socialist sense , he tolerated statements from his senior officers such as Admiral Schuster ( appointed by Raeder as the inspector of education and training ) who told new recruits in 1937 that they must be " racially and morally sound . " . In a speech given on Heroes ' Day on 12 March 1939 , Raeder praised Hitler : " ... for the clear and unmerciful declaration of war against Bolshevism and International Jewry Raeder is referring to the '' Kristallnacht '' pogrom here , whose drive for destruction of peoples we have felt quite enough in our racial body " . In January 1933 , Raeder told the future Luftwaffe general Ulrich Kessler that he should never be " indifferent " to Jews , but had to " hate " them . In contrast to his indifference to what was happening to the Jews , the conscience of the pious Lutheran Raeder was often troubled by the anti-Christian tendencies of the Nazi regime . Raeder believed that the attacks on Christianity were the work of a few radicals in the N.S.D.A.P. and that Hitler himself was a good Christian . Raeder severed his once close friendship with Pastor Martin Niemöller after Niemöller rejected his advice to stay clear of " politics " and accept the application of the Aryan paragraph to the Lutheran church
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Interwar naval service of Erich Raeder