Bruno Streckenbach

Bruno Streckenbach
SS-Gruppenführer Bruno Streckenbach
Born	(1902-02-07)7 February 1902 Hamburg, German Empire
Died	28 October 1977(1977-10-28) (aged 75) Hamburg, West Germany
Allegiance	German Empire  Weimar Republic  Nazi Germany
Service/branch	Waffen-SS
Years of service	1918–45
Rank	SS-Gruppenführer
Service number	NSDAP #489,972 SS #14,713
Commands held	8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian)
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Other work	general manager ADAC

Bruno Streckenbach (7 February 1902 – 28 October 1977) was a high-ranking member in the SS of Nazi Germany. He was the head of Administration and Personnel Department of the Reich Main Security Office. Streckenbach was responsible for many thousands of murders committed by Nazi mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.

Streckenbach served in the last year of World War I and was a member of the Freikorps between the wars. He was appointed in 1933 to run the Hamburg political police after it had been swallowed by the SS as Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich took over one state police force after another in their plan to control the national police of Nazi Germany. He was transferred to Poland after the German occupation of 1939; he oversaw the arrests of the professors at Cracow University and was one of the architects of the effective implementation of the Extraordinary Pacification Action. He was then posted to Berlin for administrative duties.

Streckenbach received a top secret order to proceed immediately to the police barracks at Pretzsch on the Elbe. He was met there by members of the SD, the Waffen-SS, the Gestapo and the Orpo police. Streckenbach trained and indoctrinated them before the invasion of the Soviet Union. Veterans of German atrocity in Poland became members of one of four newly constituted Einsatzgruppen destined for Soviet Russia.

Streckenbach detailed the mission of the Einsatzgruppen: they were to seize and destroy all political and racial enemy groups, such as Bolsheviks, gypsies, partisans and Jews. In addition, the Einsatzgruppen were to report on and evaluate material seized during the campaign and to gather information from agents among the Soviet population. Streckenbach ordered that all enemies of the Third Reich were to be deported to concentration camps and executed. Jews were especially singled out for Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment"), meaning extermination. On 9 November 1941 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei.