Werner Best
German general
Died when: 85 years 348 days (1031 months)Star Sign: Cancer
Karl Rudolf Werner Best (10 July 1903 – 23 June 1989) was a German jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer, Nazi Party leader, and theoretician from Darmstadt.
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 carried out mass-murder in Nazi-occupied territories.
Best served in the German military occupation administration of France (1940–1942), and then became the civilian administrator of occupied Denmark (1942–1945).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.
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