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Destiny's agent was a Bavarian officer named Franz Hipper: an opportunistic Raeder recognized the agent. For his superior's approval he worked with selfless care, charted courses down to a minnow's fin, was everything that a junior officer should be-except in his pint size. Franz Hipper often boomed to his bantam favorite: "When I become an admiral, I'll make you my chief of staff."
Six years later the promise was made good. As the German scouting force put out into the Skagerrak, leading the High Seas Fleet, heading into the greatest battle in modern naval history, Jutland, Vice Admiral Hipper paced the bridge of the scouting force flagship Lützow, with his binoculars dangling on the breast of his blue greatcoat. In the chart room near by stood Franz Hipper's chief of staff: Erich Raeder, brave in the four stripes of a captain.
Erich Raeder had grown. He grew vastly more in the next 48 hours. In that cataclysmic, overcast afternoon and black night, the Lützow was in the forefront of action. She was finally so battered that she had to be abandoned. Cool and unhurried, Officer Raeder oversaw the transfer of his chief's flag to another battle cruiser, the Moltke, then through the retirement picked up the pieces of his job and went methodically on with it.
The little man was now a proved man.
But he had to prove himself still further. The further cataclysm that gave Raeder his burning, hard-eyed religion was the dying days of the war, when the German Navy was ordered out to sea-and men mutinied. The fleet did not go out. To Raeder's grooved, naval mind, the realization that his idol had a Communist brain and no muscle was the final, hardening blow. On the June afternoon when a faithful few scuttled 74 ships of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow, he dedicated himself again.
He had more than mere fervor to dedicate to the job ahead. At 66, Erich Raeder can tell himself that he did not get to his present place from having been, like Himmler or Ribbentrop, a product of Nazi politics, thrown suddenly into jobs where all the emphasis was on ruthlessness or adroitness rather than craftsmanship. British and U.S. Navymen consider him an able officer, profound rather than brilliant, a deep-water seaman and organizer rather than a technical expert. He is the German nation's living link with the proud traditions of bearded old Alfred von Tirpitz, father of the blue-water Navy.
More than any other of the crack relicts of the old Navy who now serve under him, Raeder has always been a man of one idea: the Navy must be rebuilt, must again fight on (and not only under) the sea.