Description
Traces the career of Werner Best, jurist and ideologue, who was second in command to Heydrich from 1933-40, a high official in the German military government in occupied France, and German High Commissioner in Denmark. He developed the ideology which he inculcated in the academic elite of the Gestapo and SD, that there is no value above the Volk, and that the interests of the German Volk require that the Jews be eliminated. Best organized the Einsatzgruppen that operated in Poland. He set in motion the deportation of the French Jews. Refutes the allegation, propagated by Best himself, that he maneuvered to save the Danish Jews; in fact, he planned their deportation; only when he saw that the plan would fail did he make Denmark "judenrein" by leaking the plan and causing the Jews' flight to Sweden. Returning to Germany after four years of imprisonment in Denmark, he directed the campaign for an amnesty for Nazi war criminals and coordinated the defense in war crimes trials, claiming that the accused had acted under constraint of orders from above. Proceedings against Best in 1969, for his organization of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland, were stopped for alleged health reasons. Over the years he supplied information to many historians, who often used it uncritically.
