[1] 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.
[3] 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.”[3] 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.
[7] 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.
[7] It was Streckenbach's task to oversee four districts as Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei im General Gouvernement: Warsaw, Krakow, Radom and Lublin.
[2] 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.
[9] Historian Michael Wildt suggests a stark increase in the activation of Streckenbach's radicalism from his time as a Gestapo chief in Hamburg to his first few months as the head of Einsatzgruppe I in Poland.
Wildt notes the difference in responsibilities, going from arrests, abuses, assaults and killings of prisoners to the mindset of extermination of large groups of people.
More than just a racial justification, Wildt suggests that Streckenbach's first few months as head of Einsatzgruppe I escalated into a murderous ideology that was inconceivable before this position.
Furthermore, in Otto Ohlendorf's Nuremberg Trial, he testified that Bruno Streckenbach had communicated the “order for the Final Solution” to the Einsatzgruppen.
Himmler focused his efforts on ensuring that Western European Jews be sent to extermination camps as efficiently and completely as possible, allowing the office heads like Streckenbach to control how it was done.
Bruno Streckenbach's responsibilities and qualifications were highly regarded and far exceeded expectations, and for this reason he was largely considered the best candidate for the position.
[10] Historian Tuviah Friedmann speculated that Himmler saw Streckenbach in some regards as having far too much power in his hands, possibly even seeing him as professional competition.
[10] Hitler and Himmler wanted to name Streckenbach as the Senior SS and Police Leader of the Alpenland in Salzburg, Austria.
Extremely disappointed, nonetheless, Streckenbach declined and in a personal letter to Himmler, requested to be placed in a military position.
Streckenbach trained in Hilversum, Holland with an antitank unit (as an Untersturmführer) in the beginning of 1943, and quickly advanced through the ranks of the Waffen-SS, even for being a senior SS leader.
However, the Hamburg State Prosecutor's Office concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that his actions conflicted with the extant governing laws of the National Socialist rule.
In 1957, state prosecutors in Germany began discovering the unfathomable atrocities and millions of deaths of Soviet Jews culminating in the Ulm Einsatzkommando trial.
Streckenbach, who was suffering from serious heart disease at the time, claimed ineligibility notwithstanding the strains a trial might place on his health.