Venlo Incident
1. Dutch Government inquiry into the Venlo incident. Translations made by Captain Best, his comments added in red. Index
2. Original manuscript of Captain Payne Best: The Venlo Incident
3. Annotated and inscribed copy of book The Venlo Incident
4. Payne Best's prison diary 1938-1942
5. Walter L. Leschander's research notes on Venlo incident and Captain Best's answers to his questions
6. Scrapbook "General van Oorschot." Correspondence between Best and Oorschot on events preceding the Venlo incident, the assignment of a Dutch officer to Best and Stevens, Oorschot's testimony before the Dutch Commission of Inquiry, letters of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to Best 1948
7. Scrapbook "Lt. Col. R. H. Stevens." Postwar correspondence between Best and Stevens. Also included are originals of prison letters sent by Stevens to Best, on tiny sheets of paper or cardboard, copies transcribed on typewriter
8. Scrapbook "Venlo Holland." Newspaper clippings, photographs, correspondence dealing with the Venlo incident, including pictures of Best
9. Postwar newspaper clipping on Captain Best and review of the book The Venlo Incident
Colditz Castle prison
10. Scrapbook "Colditz Castle," containing photographs (identified,) some correspondence, some follow-ups on survivors of Colditz including a man living in Watts, Los Angeles, whose store was burned in the August 1964 riots
11. File of correspondence and manuscripts: Leschander-Dr. Reinhold Eggers, author of story on Colditz prison
12. Colditz file; escape story of Lt. J. E. R. Wood as told to Leschander
Payne Best
13. Tape transcriptions. Best's memoirs, occasionally going back to World War I
14. Clippings and duplicates of tape transcriptions
15. Four rolls of tape - Miscellaneous material (including Best's authorization to use material)
16. Leschander-Clayton Hutton escape devices (gadgets)
17. Leschander-Halder correspondence 1962-1965
18. Manuscripts by Walter Leschander: "A Chicken Saved Verdun; "Hitler's Fake Bomb Plot; "What Price Treason"; untitled manuscript detailing Leschander's researches
19. Miscellaneous correspondence 1959-1966
Miscellany
20. Lecture given in by Captain Payne Best "The Other Man" manuscript January 1951
21. Legal proceedings, against concentration camp guard Edgar Stiller. Best, who knew him, tried to interest survivors of the last days of the camp, including Franz Halder, to give testimony in favor of Stiller 1951
22. Story "I Was Hanged by the Nazis" by Ronald Seth (various manuscript versions)
23. Essay by Erich Gimpel, a World War II German spy caught in the United States
24. Pess clippings on Gordon Lonsdale case 1961
25. Liberation in the South Tyrolese Dolomites
26. Payne Best - Léon Blum correspondence 1945-1947
27. Scrapbook, "Germany East-West Frontier, (contains mounted photographs, identified) 1963
28. Accession books for Leschander book collection, nos. 1 and 2
Additional material
Maps (large scale) of Germany issued by the British War Office and U.S. Army Map Service, and revisions 1944
1st King's Dragoon Guards: A Brief Pictorial Record of the Regiment 1685-1958 1959
Military Historial Society Bulletin 1961, 1965
Photographs (official U.S. Army photos) of marines in China, Tarawa, Pearl Harbor, Atomic bomb, Japanese surrender, German atrocities
Letters and comments to and from Captain Sigismund Payne Best of a confidential nature pertaining to the people and events surrounding the Venlo Incident
Incremental Materials 2024