Karl Rasche
Karl Emil August Rasche (23 August 1892 – 13 September 1951) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer and a Ph.D. in law as well as a board member and banker, later spokesman, of the Dresdner Bank during the Third Reich. On 11 April 1949 he was sentenced in a Ministries Trial to seven years in prison for his activities under the Nazis. Biography Early career Rasche studied economics and law in Münster, Munich, Leipzig, Berlin, and Bonn. At the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the army and fought on the Western Front. After being wounded in 1917 he wrote a dissertation with the title "The police concept in today's Prussian law with special attention to special laws" whilst in hospital. After the war he became involved in the Baltische Landeswehr, fundraising and recruiting volunteers. From July 1919 Rasche served as a court clerk in Hamm, but moved in 1921 to work at the Barmer Bank Corporation, where he became a rehabilitation specialist. From the beginning of 1933 he was a board member of the Bochum Westfalenbank AG, where he worked with Paul Pleiger. During the Nazi period In 1934 Rasche was appointed a deputy, and from August 1935, a full board member of the Dresdner Bank. His employment with Dresdner Bank had partly come through the intervention of Wilhelm Keppler. Together with another board member, Emil Heinrich Meyer, Rasche was considered a trusted banker of the SS. Though Rasche joined the Nazi Party in May 1933, his membership was not considered valid, as no membership card was issued or any membership fees paid. In August 1939 Rasche was retroactively awarded party membership from May 1937 and was given membership number 2,207,508. From 1933, Rasche was also a member of the German Labor Front (DAF), the Rechtswahrerbund (Lawyer's association), and the Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen, the umbrella organisation for sports. During the 1936 Summer Olympics Rasche was deputy head of the Reich Office for professional athletics. Because of this role, he was introduced as a guest of honour to Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, and was introduced into the Freundeskreis Himmler by Fritz Kranefuss in the autumn of 1936. Rasche joined the SS (membership number 323,879) in May 1939 with membership retroactive to November 1938 as a Hauptsturmführer (SS Captain). After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, Rasche became involved in the expansion of the banking business in Austria and later in the Sudetenland and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. From the mid-1930s, he served as Chairman or Board member in the war effort and also led the business departments of the subsidiaries Handelstrust West NV (Amsterdam) and Continentale Bank SA (Brussels). Towards the end of December 1942 he was promoted to CEO of the Dresdner Bank after a restructuring of the bank, together with . In December 1943, he joined the Executive Group West in Bad Nauheim. Rasche was involved in the negotiation of credit to the SS, which operated Nazi forced labor camps and concentration camps