German criminal police officer and SS leader who served in high-ranking positions including head of the Berlin Police Department.
He was one of the sons of a city inspector (“Magstrats-Secretair”). His brother was Günther Braschwitz, who also became a police detective.
After passing the specialist criminal examination, he was appointed criminal commissioner on 1 May 1927 and appointed to the Berlin police headquarters, where he was assigned to the political department. During this time he was involved, among other things, in the organization of bodyguard protection for the then Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann and the investigation of bombings by right-wing groups, such as the investigation of the attack on the Reichstag in 1929.
When the Secret State Police (Gestapo) was founded a few weeks after the National Socialists (Nazis) came to power in the Spring of 1933 at the instigation of the then Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Göring, Braschwitz was one of the first officers to be transferred to the unit: from February or March 1933 to April 1934 he was the Gestapo’s head of “Combating the illegal KPD and SPD movement”.
Braschwitz joined the NSDAP (Nazi membership number 2,633,264) on 1 May 1933, and later also became a member of the SS (SS No. 458,447).
In May 1934, shortly after Reinhard Heydrich took over the Secret State Police Office, Braschwitz was transferred to the criminal police and appointed head of the Berlin Police Department. In 1938 he was transferred to the Reich Security Main Office. He saw the end of the war in Salzburg.
At the end of the war, Braschwitz was captured by the United States. In February 1947 he was delivered to Czechoslovakia. After a year in Czech captivity, he returned to West Germany in 1948. In 1950 he was denazified and classified in category V. In October 1954 he was employed by the criminal police in Dortmund.
Rudolf Braschwitz died on 25 April 1974 in Hagen, Westphalia at age 74.

Link to Wikipedia biography (German)