page_title: Werner Best
section_title: The Nazi state and World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Werner Best / The Nazi state and World War II
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: Schalburgkorpsets mindehøjtidelighed for faldne danske frivillige på Østfronten i Frimurerlogen d. 17.oktober 1943. Fra venstre ses Obersturmbannführer K. B. Martinsen, sturmbannführer Boysen, Fru von Schalburg m. søn og den tyske rigsbefuldmægtigede Werner Best. (Original billedtekst). PS. Werner Best har på pågældende tidspunkt rang af SS-Gruppenführer. Sted: Blegdamsvej, København Ø Dato: 17. Oktober 1943 Se flere billeder her: erez.natmus.dk/FHMbilleder/Site/index.jsp Rights: natmus.dk/en/besoeg-museerne/frihedsmuseet/archives/photo... More about The Museum of Danish Resistance (Frihedsmuseet): natmus.dk/en/besoeg-museerne/frihedsmuseet/
context_page_description: Karl Rudolf Werner Best was a German Nazi, jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer and Nazi Party leader and theoretician from Darmstadt, Hesse. He was the first chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, and initiated a registry of all Jews in Germany. As a deputy of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, he organized the World War II SS-Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings.
  Best served in the German military occupation administration of France, and then became the civilian administrator of occupied Denmark. Convicted of war crimes in Denmark, Best was released in 1951. He escaped further prosecution in West Germany in 1972 due to ill health and died in 1989, aged 85.
context_section_description: As a trained lawyer, Heydrich and Himmler counted on Best throughout the 1930s for his skills in conceptualizing and justifying National Socialist law, which helped provide the SS-police apparatus with its nearly unrestricted power over German society. Dedicated to the national-racial cause of the Nazis and typifying the ideal administrator for its terror apparatus, Best quickly rose to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer and became chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, which was in charge of organization, administration, and legal affairs. He was a deputy to Reinhard Heydrich. Both men saw the Gestapo as actually working on "behalf of the German people" through both "ethnic and political purification". During 1934, Ernst Röhm pushed for greater political influence for his already powerful Nazi paramilitary organisation, the Sturmabteilung (SA). Hitler decided that the SA had to be eliminated as an independent political force. On 30 June 1934 the SS and Gestapo acted in coordinated mass arrests that continued for two days. While Heydrich coordinated the operation from Berlin, Best was sent to Munich to "oversee a wave of arrests" in the southern part of Germany. The purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Up to 200 people, including Röhm, were killed in the action.
  Even though Canadian historian Robert Gellately wrote that most Gestapo men were not Nazis, at the same time they were not opposed to the Nazi regime, which they were willing to serve, in whatever task they were called upon to perform. Over time, membership in the Gestapo included ideological training, particularly once Best assumed a leading role for training in April 1936. Employing biological metaphors, Best emphasized a doctrine which encouraged members of the Gestapo to view themselves as 'doctors' to the national body in the struggle against "pathogens" and "diseases"; among the implied sicknesses were "communists, Freemasons, and the churches—and above and behind all these stood the Jews." Heydrich thought along similar lines and advocated both defensive and offensive measures on the part of the Gestapo, so as to prevent any subversion or destruction of the National Socialist body.
  On 27 September 1939, the SD and SiPo (made up of the Gestapo and the Kripo) were folded into the new Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt; RSHA), which was placed under Heydrich's control. Best was made head of Amt I (Department I) of the RSHA: Administration and Legal. That department dealt with the legal and personnel issues/matters of the SS and security police. Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler relied on Best to develop and explain legally the activities against enemies of the state and in relation to the Nazi Jewish policy. In 1939 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 (the Einsatzkommandos) 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. With the military grade of War Administration Chief (Kriegsverwaltungschef), Best was appointed chief of the Section "Administration" (Abteilung Verwaltung) of the Administration Staff (Verwaltungsstab, Dr Schmid) under then (Militärbefehlshaber in Frankreich or MBF) "Military Commander in France", General Otto von Stülpnagel in occupied France. Best held this position until 1942.
  In his efforts as the RSHA emissary in France, Best's unit drew up radical plans for a total reorganization of Western Europe based on racial principles: he sought to unite Netherlands, Flanders and French territory north of the Loire river into the Reich, turn Wallonia and Brittany into German protectorates, merge Northern Ireland with the Irish Free State, create a decentralized British federation and break Spain into independent entities of Galicia, Basque Country and Catalonia.
  After the November 1942 Telegram Crisis, Best was appointed the Third Reich's Plenipote
caption: Best participating in the commemoration for fallen members of the Schalburg Corps, Copenhagen 17 October 1943.
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