Karl Hermann Frank /

Karl Hermann Frank (24 January 1898 – 22 May 1946) was a prominent Sudeten German Nazi official in Czechoslovakia prior to and during World War II and an SS-Obergruppenführer. He was executed by hanging after World War II for his role in organizing the massacres of the people of the Czech villages of Lidice and Ležáky. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia in Austria-Hungary (present-day Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic), Frank was taught by his father (a proponent of Georg Ritter von Schönerer’s policies) about nationalist agitation. After spending an unsuccessful year at the law school of the German University in Prague, Frank served in the Austro-Hungarian Army at the end of World War I. After the war, Frank operated a book store and joined various right wing groups and societies, such as the Kameradschaftsbund. An extreme advocate of the incorporation of the Sudetenland into Germany, Frank joined the Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (Sudeten German National Socialist Party-DNSAP) in 1919 and set up a book store out of which he distributed Nazi propaganda. When the party was suppressed by the Czechoslovak government, Frank helped organize the Sudeten-German Homeland Front in 1933,