The next year in Kufstein, the then 14-year-old Lauterbacher co-founded the first Ortsgruppe (Local Group) of the Deutschen Jugend (German Youth) in Austria.

In April 1927, he joined the Hitler Youth (HJ) as member number 4,709, merging the Deutschen Jugend organization in Austria with it and becoming the HJ-Unterführer (subleader) in the Tyrol.

By 1 February 1930, he had advanced to HJ-Bezirksführer (Area Leader) and by 21 March he was a full-time Hitler Youth official as the HJ-Gauführer for Gau Southern Hanover-Brunswick with headquarters in Hanover.

Lauterbacher demonstrated great energy and organizational ability, establishing 31 HJ units in the Gau and increasing membership from 98 in 1930 to over 4,000 by 1932.

On 26 May 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power, he advanced to Führer of the HJ-Obergebeits-West, overseeing all HJ units in six regions of western Germany, including all the Rhineland, the Palatinate and Hesse-Nassau.

[4] In addition to his HJ responsibilities, on 29 March 1936, Lauterbacher was elected as a deputy to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 16, Southern Hanover-Brunswick, a seat he would retain until the fall of the Nazi regime.

In 1939, he helped to establish the Academy for Youth Leadership in Braunschweig, a facility for the training and political indoctrination of HJ leaders.

While undergoing training in Döberitz, he suffered a severe injury to his right shin with a bone marrow infection and thrombosis that required hospitalization in June at the Hohenlychen Sanatorium, an SS medical facility.

Formally discharged from the Waffen-SS as unfit for front line duty, he joined the Allgemeine-SS (SS number 382,406) on 2 August 1940 with the rank of SS-Brigadeführer, and was assigned to the staff of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

[7] In March 1941, Lauterbacher issued orders to the district Regierungspräsident, the Hanover Oberbürgermeister and the local Gestapo to begin planning for the vacating of Jewish homes and apartments within the city.

Shortly before the arrival of the Americans, and only 20 days before Adolf Hitler killed himself, Lauterbacher drove his family to safety in the Harz, but not before having announced over the radio the requisite exhortations for the public to hold out against the onslaught.

He also issued a proclamation in the Braunschweig newspaper on 6 April threatening death to anyone who "cowardly and traitorously … hoists the white flag and surrenders without a fight".

On 5 July 1946, the High British Military Court in Hanover acquitted Lauterbacher of the charge of having ordered the murder of German and Allied detainees early in April 1945 at the prison in Hamelin.

Lauterbacher, who since the end of the war had been interned in the Sandbostel camp near Bremervörde, on 25 February 1948 managed to flee detention in circumstances that are still unclear.

[17] Based on American intelligence documents, Lauterbacher is alleged to have made connections with the Counterintelligence Corps of the US Army, collaborating with it to establish an international anti-Communist organization in Hungary.

Lauterbacher was identified and attacked by the Italian Communist Party newspaper l'Unità in April 1950 as a former Nazi leader being assisted by the Church.

However, on 14 December 2014, Spiegel online published a story revealing that Lauterbacher had been an operative of the intelligence services of West Germany for thirteen years.

He lived in Munich and West Berlin, posing as a foreign trade representative for a Munich-based company owned by his brother Hans.

While still posing as a businessman, he coordinated espionage activities in various countries in North Africa and the Middle East, and rose to become a department head.