Bruno Streckenbach
Bruno Streckenbach | |
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File:Bruno Streckenbach.jpg
SS-Gruppenführer Bruno Streckenbach
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Born | Hamburg, German Empire |
7 February 1902
Died | 28 October 1977 Hamburg, West Germany |
(aged 75)
Allegiance | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Service/branch | ![]() |
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.
Contents
SS career
Allgemeine-SS
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.
Waffen-SS
Streckenbach then requested to join a combat unit, and in September 1942 he was transferred to the Waffen-SS. He was assigned to the 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer in March 1943. By April 1943 he was in command of the division's anti-tank battalion. Later in the autumn he replaced Hermann Fegelein as a divisional commander, and was promoted to SS-Oberführer on 30 January 1944.
On 13 April 1944 he was appointed commander of the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian). Streckenbach held this post to the end of the war; he achieved the rank of SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS in November 1944. Streckenbach was awarded the Knight's Cross, and later the Oak Leaves.
Post-war
Streckenbach was taken prisoner by the Soviet forces and, in 1952, he was sentenced to serve twenty-five years in prison, but was released on 10 October 1955. During the Nuremberg trial, defendant Otto Ohlendorf stated that Streckenbach, in mid-June 1941, had transmitted the extermination order, at a meeting concerning the missions of the Einsatzgruppen.
The West German government brought Streckenbach to trial in 1973 but the case was dismissed due to defendant's ill health.[1] He died on 28 October 1977 in Hamburg.
Awards
- Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class (10 October 1940) & 1st Class (15 July 1943)[2]
- German Cross in Gold on 15 December 1943 as SS-Standartenführer in the SS-Kavallerie-Division[3]
- Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
References
Citations
- ↑ Blood 2006, p. 324.
- ↑ Thomas 1998, p. 360.
- ↑ Patzwall & Scherzer 2001, p. 464.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Scherzer 2007, p. 730.
Bibliography
- Blood, Phillip W. (2006). Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe. Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1597970211.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>
- Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8. Unknown parameter
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ignored (help)CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles> - Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2. Unknown parameter
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Military offices | ||
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Preceded by SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein |
Commander of 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer 13 September 1943 – 22 October 1943 |
Succeeded by SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein |
Preceded by SS-Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein |
Commander of 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer 1 January 1944 – 13 April 1944 |
Succeeded by SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Lombard |
Preceded by SS-Standartenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Bock |
Commander of 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian) 13 April 1944 – 8 May 1945 |
Succeeded by none |
- Pages with broken file links
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- 1902 births
- 1977 deaths
- People from Hamburg
- German Nazi politicians
- Recipients of the Gold German Cross
- Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
- Recipients of the War Merit Cross, 1st class
- SS-Gruppenführer
- Einsatzgruppen personnel
- Holocaust perpetrators in Poland
- Nazi war criminals released early from prison
- RSHA personnel
- Waffen-SS personnel
- Gestapo personnel
- 20th-century Freikorps personnel
- German military personnel of World War I
- Nazis who served in World War I
- Kapp Putsch participants