Sigismund Payne Best

Sigismund Payne Best was a British intelligence officer who worked in continental Europe and became involved in Secret Intelligence Service contacts with supposed German military opponents of Hitler after the outbreak of the Second World War. The meetings appeared to offer a route to information and possible peace contacts during the Phoney War.

On 9 November 1939 Best and fellow SIS officer Richard Henry Stevens went to a meeting near Venlo in the neutral Netherlands. The contacts were part of a German deception, and an armed team seized the British officers and carried them across the border. Best spent the war in German custody and later wrote about his experiences.