Karl Rasche
Encyclopedia
Karl Emil August Rasche (23 August 1892 in Iserlohn
– 13 September 1951 in Basel
) 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.
, 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
.
. 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 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 Carl Luer. 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 and financed the Germanisation
programmes in occupied Eastern Europe. In banking, Rasche was also involved in Aryanization
in the Netherlands and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. His participation in the Nazi regime is also demonstrated in the transfer of Czech arms factories to the Reichswerke Hermann Göring
, which he carried out together with Hans Kehrl.
investigators in the American occupation zone. He was arrested immediately after his arrival in Frankfurt
. He was imprisoned in Darmstadt
after a stay in the prison in Frankfurt and in the 74th Ludwigsburg camp. From there he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, and finally was called to trial in April 1947 in the Nuremberg Trials
.
As the only banker on trial from in the private sector, Rasche was indicted on 4 November 1947 at the Ministries Trial
, the eleventh set of trials to take place under the Nuremberg Trials. His counsel was Egon Kubuschok.
Regarding the seventh indictment of collaborating in slave labour, the prosecution could not prove conclusively whether Rasche had visited concentration camps or taken loans to pay for their building.
Rasche was released (early) in August 1950 from the Landsberg Prison
for war criminals. In October/November 1950 Rasche was declared to have completed the denazification
process. He was unable to resume work at the Dresdner Bank. In May 1951 representatives of the Bank agreed on a settlement for compensation and pension claims. Rasche continued working as a consultant and died as a result of a heart attack on a commuter train to Basel in September 1951.
Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board
Member of the Supervisory Board
Iserlohn
Iserlohn is a city in the Märkischer Kreis district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is the largest city by population and area within the district and the Sauerland region.-Geography:...
– 13 September 1951 in Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
) was an SS-Obersturmbannführer and a Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...
as well as a Board member and banker, later spokesman, of the Dresdner Bank
Dresdner Bank
Dresdner Bank AG was one of Germany's largest banking corporations and was based in Frankfurt. It was acquired by competitor Commerzbank in December 2009.- 19th century :...
during the Third Reich. On 11 April 1949 he was sentenced in a Ministries Trial
Ministries Trial
The Ministries Trial was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
to seven years in prison for his activities under the Nazis.
Early career
Rasche studied economics and law in Munster, MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, and Bonn
Bonn
Bonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
. At the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the army and fought on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
. 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
Baltische Landeswehr
Baltische Landeswehr was the name of the unified armed forces of the Couronian and Livonian nobility from 7 December 1918 to 3 July 1919.- Command structure :...
, fundraising and recruiting volunteers. From July 1919 Rasche served as a court clerk in Hamm
Hamm
Hamm is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia , Germany. It is located in the northeastern part of the Ruhr area. As of December 2003 its population was 180,849. The city is situated between the A1 motorway and A2 motorway...
, 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
Paul Pleiger
Paul Pleiger was a German state adviser and corporate general director....
.
During the Nazi period
In 1934 Rasche was appointed a deputy, and from August 1935, a full board member of the Dresdner BankDresdner Bank
Dresdner Bank AG was one of Germany's largest banking corporations and was based in Frankfurt. It was acquired by competitor Commerzbank in December 2009.- 19th century :...
. His employment with Dresdner Bank had partly come through the intervention of Wilhelm Keppler
Wilhelm Keppler
Wilhelm Karl Keppler was a German businessman and one of Adolf Hitler's early financial backers. Introduced to Hitler by Heinrich Himmler, Keppler helped to finance the Nazi Party....
. Together with another board member, Emil Heinrich Meyer
Emil Heinrich Meyer
Emil Heinrich Meyer was a German business executive. Meyer was a board member at the ITT Corporation's Germany-based subsidiaries Standard Elektrik Lorenz and Mix & Genest as well as AEG....
, Rasche was considered a trusted banker of the SS. Though Rasche joined the Nazi 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
Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen
The Nationalsozialistischer Reichsbund für Leibesübungen , more rarely "NSRBL", , known as Deutscher Reichsbund für Leibesübungen until 1938, was the umbrella organization for sports during the Third Reich.The NSRL was led by the Reichssportführer, who after 1934 was...
, the umbrella organisation for sports. During the 1936 Summer Olympics
1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was held in 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the bid to host the Games over Barcelona, Spain on April 26, 1931, at the 29th IOC Session in Barcelona...
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
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, the leader of the Nazi Party, and was introduced into the Freundeskreis Himmler
Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft
The Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft, or Circle of Friends of the Economy was a group of German industrialists whose aim was to raise funds for racial research within the Third Reich...
by Fritz Kranefuss
Fritz Kranefuss
Friedrich Carl Arthur Kranefuß , known as Fritz Kranefuß, was a German industrialist and a Wehrwirtschaftsführer in the Third Reich....
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
Hauptsturmführer
Hauptsturmführer was a Nazi rank of the SS which was used between the years of 1934 and 1945. The rank of Hauptsturmführer was a mid-grade company level officer and was the equivalent of a Captain in the German Army and also the equivalent of captain in foreign armies...
(SS Captain). After the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
of Austria in 1938, Rasche became involved in the expansion of the banking business in Austria and later in the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was the majority ethnic-Czech protectorate which Nazi Germany established in the central parts of Bohemia, Moravia and Czech Silesia in what is today the Czech Republic...
. 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 Carl Luer. In December 1943, he joined the Executive Group West in Bad Nauheim
Bad Nauheim
Bad Nauheim is a town in the Wetteraukreis district of Hesse state of Germany. , Bad Nauheim has a population of 30,365. The town is located approximately 35 kilometers north of Frankfurt am Main, on the east edge of the Taunus mountain range. It is a world-famous resort, noted for its salt...
.
Rasche was involved in the negotiation of credit to the SS, which operated Nazi forced labor camps and concentration camps and financed the Germanisation
Germanisation
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
programmes in occupied Eastern Europe. In banking, Rasche was also involved in Aryanization
Aryanization
Aryanization is a term coined during Nazism referring to the forced expulsion of so-called "non-Aryans", mainly Jews, from business life in Nazi Germany and the territories it controlled....
in the Netherlands and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. His participation in the Nazi regime is also demonstrated in the transfer of Czech arms factories to the Reichswerke Hermann Göring
Reichswerke Hermann Göring
Reichswerke Hermann Göring was an industrial conglomerate of Nazi Germany. It was established in July 1937 to extract and process domestic iron ores from Salzgitter that were deemed uneconomical by the privately held steel mills...
, which he carried out together with Hans Kehrl.
After the war
In April 1945 Rasche was arrested at Bad Nauheim and was placed in French captivity. He was questioned in Paris. Rasche was confined to the French occupation zone and his activity was limited to the "promotion of cross-border economic relations" for the French military government. In November 1945 Rasche was appointed to exchange information with the Office of Military Government, United StatesOffice of Military Government, United States
The Office of Military Government, United States was the United States military-established government created shortly after the end of hostilities in occupied Germany in World War II. Under General Lucius D...
investigators in the American occupation zone. He was arrested immediately after his arrival in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
. He was imprisoned in Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
after a stay in the prison in Frankfurt and in the 74th Ludwigsburg camp. From there he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp, and finally was called to trial in April 1947 in the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
.
As the only banker on trial from in the private sector, Rasche was indicted on 4 November 1947 at the Ministries Trial
Ministries Trial
The Ministries Trial was the eleventh of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
, the eleventh set of trials to take place under the Nuremberg Trials. His counsel was Egon Kubuschok.
Regarding the seventh indictment of collaborating in slave labour, the prosecution could not prove conclusively whether Rasche had visited concentration camps or taken loans to pay for their building.
Rasche was released (early) in August 1950 from the Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison
Landsberg Prison is a penal facility located in the town of Landsberg am Lech in the southwest of the German state of Bavaria, about west of Munich and south of Augsburg....
for war criminals. In October/November 1950 Rasche was declared to have completed the denazification
Denazification
Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out specifically by removing those involved from positions of influence and by disbanding or rendering...
process. He was unable to resume work at the Dresdner Bank. In May 1951 representatives of the Bank agreed on a settlement for compensation and pension claims. Rasche continued working as a consultant and died as a result of a heart attack on a commuter train to Basel in September 1951.
Work in supervisory boards
Chairman of the Supervisory Board- 1938–1945: Perlmooser Cement AG, Vienna
- 1939–1944: Bohemian Escompte Bank, Prague (banking subsidiary Dresdner Bank)
- 1939–1944: Poldi Hütte AG, Prague
- 1941–1945: Commercial Credit Bank Ltd., Riga
- 1943–1945: West German Bodenkreditanstalt, Cologne
- 1943–1945: Tatra Werke AG, Prague
- Engelhardt-Brauerei AG Brewery, Berlin
- Hardy & Co. Ltd. Bank, Berlin
Vice-Chairman of the Supervisory Board
- 1944 Allgemeine Versicherungs AG, Vienna
- 1936–1945: Dyckerhoff Portland Cement AG, Mainz-Amöneburg
- 1939–1945: Rheinische rayon AG, Krefeld
Member of the Supervisory Board
- 1936–1945: Mülheim mining association
- 1936–1939: Junkers aircraft and engine plants AG
- 1937–1945: Winter Hall]] AG, Kassel
- 1937–1945: GEA Group AG, Frankfurt
- 1938–1944: Gerling Group Life Insurance AG, Cologne
- 1938–1945: Felten & Guillaume AG, Cologne
- 1938–1945: Coal AG of Essen, Essen
- 1938–1945: Country Bank Wien AG (subsidiary of Dresdner Bank)
- 1938–1945: Iron and Steelworks AG, Cologne-Beckum
- 1939–1945: Accumulatoren FactoryVARTAVARTA AG was a company based in Germany manufacturing batteries for global automotive, industrial and consumer markets. A sales slogan was "you're smarter to fit Varta!" in the mid 1990s...
AG, Hagen - 1939–1945: Brno Arms FactoryCeská Zbrojovka Uhersky BrodČeská zbrojovka a.s. Uherský Brod is a Czech firearms manufacturer.-History:CZUB was established in 1936 as a branch of the Česká zbrojovka armament firm in the small Moravian town of Uherský Brod in Czechoslovakia, now in the Czech Republic....
AG, Prague - 1939–1944: Döhrener Werke AG, Hannover
- 1940–1944: Coal-Benzin AG (BRABAG), Berlin
- 1940–1945: Continental Oil AG, Berlin
- 1940–1945: Škoda WorksŠkoda WorksŠkoda Works was the largest industrial enterprise in Austro-Hungary and later in Czechoslovakia, one of its successor states. It was also one of the largest industrial conglomerates in Europe in the 20th century...
AG, Hanover - 1940–1945: RheinmetallRheinmetallRheinmetall AG is a German automotive and defence company with factories in Düsseldorf, Kassel and Unterlüß. The company has a long tradition of making guns and artillery pieces...
AG, Düsseldorf