25 Facts About Werner Best

Karl Rudolf Werner Best was a German jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer, Nazi Party leader, and theoretician from Darmstadt.

Werner Best was the first chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, and initiated a registry of all Jews in Germany.

Werner Best escaped further prosecution in West Germany in 1972 due to ill health and died in 1989, aged 85.

Werner Best was born on 10 July 1903 in Darmstadt, Hesse, but his parents moved to Dortmund when he was nine before settling in Mainz, where he completed his education.

Werner Best's father was a postmaster who was killed in France at the outset of World War I In his younger years, Best founded the German National Youth League and joined the National People's Party of Mainz.

Werner Best became a member of the Academy for German Law and the chairman of its Committee on Police Law, where he worked alongside the future SS-Oberfuhrer Reinhard Hohn.

Werner Best appeared dedicated to the national-racial cause of the Nazis and typified the ideal administrator for its terror apparatus.

Historian Frank Trentmann wrote that "Werner Best personified the technocratic Nazi, cold and functional".

Correspondingly, Werner Best quickly rose to the rank of SS-Brigadefuhrer and became chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, which was in charge of organization, administration, and legal affairs.

Over time, membership in the Gestapo included ideological indoctrination, particularly once Werner Best assumed a leading role for training in April 1936.

Werner Best was made head of Amt I of the RSHA: Administration and Legal.

Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler relied on Werner Best to develop and legally justify the activities against enemies of the state, especially those aimed at Jews.

In 1939 Werner Best became one of the directors of Heydrich's foundation, the Stiftung Nordhav, and was placed in command of choosing leaders for the Einsatzgruppen task forces and their subgroups from among educated people with military experience; many of them former members of the Freikorps.

Werner Best lost a power struggle within the RSHA, and had to leave Berlin in 1940.

On 12 May 1944, Werner Best demanded that the Danish police should assume responsibility for protection of 57 enterprises the Germans deemed at risk of sabotage by the Danish resistance movement, which was growing in strength.

Werner Best accepted this proposal, but on condition that the camp be built close to the German border.

Werner Best possibly sabotaged the rounding up of the Jewish population in Denmark in order to avoid agitating the general Danish population.

In deliberations on 3 May 1945 about preparation for the impending German defeat, Werner Best fought to avoid implementation of a scorched earth policy in Denmark.

For instance, Werner Best claimed that the Gestapo primarily instituted investigations in response to reports from the general public and that only serious cases of treason warranted "enhanced interrogations" under strict guidelines, during which no confessions were ever extorted from the accused.

In 1948, Werner Best was sentenced to death by a Danish court, but his sentence was reduced to 12 years on appeal.

Werner Best was released in 1951 as part of a Danish amnesty program for Nazi war criminals.

Werner Best maintained contacts with members of the so-called Naumann Circle, such as Werner Naumann, Hans Fritzsche and Franz Six.

In 1958 Werner Best was fined 70,000 marks by a Berlin court for his actions as an SS officer during the war.

In March 1969, Werner Best was held in detention and in February 1972 he was charged again, when further war crimes allegations arose, but he was released in August 1972 on grounds that he was medically unfit to stand trial.

Werner Best died in Mulheim, North Rhine-Westphalia, on 23 June 1989.