S. Payne Best (1885–1978)

S. (Sigmund) Payne Best was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. His parents were Catherine Sophia and George Payne Best, a physician. After studying science in London, Best worked as a businessman; then in 1908, he went to study violin at the Music Academy of Lausanne, Switzerland. He then studied economics and musicology at the University of Munich, graduating in 1913. In Munich he learned to speak excellent German. Back in England, he volunteer for the British Army in World War I and rose to the rank of captain. He served in the Intelligence Corps and then as the second officer of GHQ's London bureau. In 1917, he was sent to Rotterdam, Netherlands to handle and set up intelligence networks in German-occupied Belgium. After being demobilized in 1919, Best returned to the Netherlands, where he and his partner in business and intelligence, P.N. van der Willik, set up a British firm called the Continental Trade Service, and a consultancy agency for British businessmen. With World War II looming in 1938, Best was recruited into a new branch of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) run by Claude Dansey called the Z network. Best was unwittingly drawn into a covert German operation pretending to be a plan for a coup against Adolf Hitler. On November 9, 1939, Best and his fellow British agent Richard Henry Stevens were kidnapped by the Nazis on the outskirts of the city of Venlo, close to the German border. Under interrogation, the two gave up detailed information on British espionage activities. Best and Stevens were kept as protected prisoners at Sachsenhausen concentration camp between 1940 and 1945. Best was later transferred to Buchenwald and then to Dachau. In late April 1945, Best and Stevens were put on the transport of important prisoners to the Tyrol, where they were liberated. After the war, Best ran an import-export business in The Hague for a number of years. With his third wife, he moved in the 1950s back to England. In 1950, with permission from the SIS, he published his memoirs, entitled The Venlo Incident, which became a bestseller.