In the weeks leading up to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual stress test of major banks, a former risk executive of Deutsche Bank AG repeatedly warned senior managers of the German bank’s U.S. unit that they were painting a far too rosy picture of the bank’s health. They were written by William Broeksmit in December 2013 and January 2014 as the bank was preparing its Fed-mandated, internally run stress test. At the time, Broeksmit was serving as a director of the U.S. unit. The bank needed to “stress harder,” Broeksmit wrote in one email to senior managers.