English source-aligned edition
Werner Best
Werner Best served as senior Security Police and SD lawyer involved in organising Einsatzgruppen for the 1939 campaign. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Germany and occupied Poland through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- Best held senior legal and organisational posts in the Gestapo, Security Police and SD.
- He participated at headquarters level in preparing Einsatzgruppen structures and the framework for Operation Tannenberg in 1939.
- His later occupation service in Denmark was prosecuted there after the war.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Best represents the organisational link between central security-police planning and the mobile units deployed during the invasion of Poland. This supports responsibility for creating and coordinating an apparatus, but not automatic attribution of every later field-unit crime.
Key events and mechanisms
- Before the invasion of Poland, security-police headquarters prepared Einsatzgruppen and Operation Tannenberg structures in which Best held an organising role.
- In 1939 those mobile formations accompanied the German campaign and targeted Polish elites.
- After the war Denmark convicted Best for his occupation role there.
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
Best was convicted and imprisoned in Denmark, then released. Investigations in West Germany into his earlier work in the Nazi security apparatus did not result in a final conviction before his death in 1989.
Limits of the evidence
The existing profile establishes Best's institutional role more securely than authorship of individual orders. Claims about particular executions require signed documents or unit reports and must remain separate from his later administration in Denmark.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.