Bruno Streckenbach

Bruno Streckenbach (7 February 1902 – 28 October 1977) was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era.

He was the head of Administration and Personnel Department of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA).

Streckenbach was responsible for many thousands of murders committed by Nazi mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.

Bruno Streckenbach was born in Hamburg, Germany on 7 February 1902.

His highest education was Gymnasium, which he left in April 1918 to voluntarily report to the German Army during World War I.

Just like his close colleagues Erwin Schulz and Heinrich Himmler, he never served on the front lines of the battlefield due to the ceasefire that took place in November 1918.

After the end of the First World War, he was an active member of the Freikorps Bahrenfeld, which took part in the 1920 Kapp-Putsch.

He was employed as a wholesale merchant, tried his hand at advertising, being a radio editor and also trying to establish himself as the director of a local office.

Streckenbach himself only entered the police force on 31 August 1931 as the leader of the SS-Sturmbanner in Hamburg, Streckenbach's placement as chief of the Gestapo in Hamburg illustrates the “superficiality of professional continuity” – referring to the lack of qualifications many candidates possessed – as some historians characterize the Nazi Party's seizure of power.

For years, these young radical right-wing militants had been marginalized, but with the rise of the Nazis, they were now given the chance to pursue a career which preserved their radical and violent worldviews, and indeed encouraged such behaviour.

Historian Bradley Smith argues that the Nazi seizure of power offered these young men, including Bruno Streckenbach, a career which abided by and even enhanced their radicalism, and provided professional advancements which they had failed to receive in their careers up to this point.

Reinhard Heydrich and Himmler were always trying to expand their power and authority beyond the confines of the German Reich.

In accordance with Hitler's notion of Lebensraum, active persecution against Polish people, and long-term goals of “conquering extensive territories in the Soviet Union”, Hitler and other top Nazi leadership started preparing for a war, marked by the invasion of Poland.

In preparation for the invasion of Poland, Heydrich expressed his ambition of having mobilized killing squads, a “fighting administration” as he put it.

The Einsatzgruppen were in charge of securing German power and occupational authority in Poland through terror, furthering the ideology of ethnic cleansing and Lebensraum via deportations out of the occupied territory and mass executions within.

The number of Einsatzgruppen corresponded to the Wehrmacht army units deployed.

The leaders of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo; Security Police) in Berlin selected the office heads of the Einsatzgruppen very carefully, most of them being prior SD members or leaders.

The members of the Einsatzgruppen— 500 men per Einsatzgruppe— were taken from local SS and police stations near the five units’ locations.

After the war, Bruno Streckenbach testified that Werner Best had directed deployment orders directly to him at the end of July or beginning of August.

Streckenbach immediately left Hamburg to drive to Vienna, where he was deployed as head of Einsatzgruppe I.

1933 was a huge year for many soon-to-be SS and police officers.

As some historians have mentioned, for people like Streckenbach, 1933 was the year in which they assumed positions of the Gestapo (Political Police), but also the year which they were put into “leadership positions, posts they would hardly have occupied without the National Socialist seizure of power.” Following the Reichstag Fire on 27 February 1933 which the Nazis falsely propagated to be “communist-led,” there was a suspension of constitutional rights in the Weimar Republic, which increased the power of the government.

Protests occurred and subsequently severe persecution towards left-wing politicians followed the Presidential Decree for the Protection of Volk and State on 28 February.

In the March 5 Reichstag Elections, the National Socialists won power, although only upon merging with the Deutschnationale Volkspartei.

After having the majority vote, the Nazis seized full power.

Persecution against political opponents and Jews increased, as did incidence of brutal assault, sporadic murder, and arson.

It was during this seizure of power that many of the future leaders of the RSHA were given their first positions in the party.

More than a quarter of the future RSHA leaders had already been police officers in their respective home towns before 1933.

In 1933, almost two-thirds of these men were given political police positions in their towns or cities, or sent to Berlin as a part of the Gestapo Office.

The German Wehrmacht invaded Poland on the morning of 1 September 1939.

The Einsatzgruppen followed after them sending reports back to Berlin detailing the actions of Operation Tannenberg, the code name given to the anti-Polish extermination action carried out by the SD and SiPo in Poland during the opening weeks of the war.

It was Streckenbach's task to oversee four districts as Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei im General Gouvernement: Warsaw, Krakow, Radom and Lublin.

In each of these districts, thousands of Polish intellectuals—many former officers, professors, teachers, or politicians—were arrested and soon after, murdered.

Streckenbach detailed the mission of the Einsatzgruppen: they were to seize and destroy all political and racial enemy groups, such as leftists, Roma, Polish resistance and Jews.

In addition, they were to report on and evaluate material seized during the campaign and to gather information from agents among the Soviet population.

Streckenbach ordered all enemies of the Third Reich to be deported to concentration camps and there to be executed.

Jews were especially singled out for Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment"), a process that entailed particularly brutal beatings.

By the end of 1939, the Einsatzgruppen were permanent units of the RSHA.

Many members of the RSHA worked alongside the Einsatzgruppen in implementing brutal violence and mass murder throughout Poland.

On 9 November 1941 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei.