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. On 9 November 1941 he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei. Einsatzgruppen 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. In May 1940, thousands of Poles were reported as liquidated. At the end of this month, Streckenbach had reported that “sentencing by martial law” was completed, with over 8,500 persons–whether accused as being “career criminals” or summoned to “summary sentencing”–were either already executed or would be shortly. During his time in Poland, he had earned a reputation as the ruthless chief, who fought with such determination and mercilessness to eradicate any, and all, Nazi opponents. Historian Michael Wildt suggests a stark increase in the activation of Streckenbach's radicalness 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 unconceivable before this position. Most of the previous SD men who were now employed in the Einsatzgruppen hadn't inflicted such murderous activity on so many people up until this point. As Wildt suggests, the deployment in Poland for the Einsatzgruppen was a