![]() ![]() ![]() To be sure, it is a curious thing to leave to your son, but in my own experience of being a member of this family, it was an effort to cleanse one's legacy by turning attention to military strategy and the land, rather than the human cost of war. He’d read the book at least 15 times while in exile in Brazil, my uncle said, scouring it for explanations as to why the vast estate he’d dreamt of owning as a future member of the Reich’s SS aristocracy in Ukraine, a promised land to avid Nazis for its black earth, had remained out of his reach. My grandfather feverishly annotated and underlined in red the sections that explained the principal tactical and strategic mistakes that deprived the Reich of a victory. ![]() It was the only thing my grandfather, a Nazi and SS officer stationed in eastern Europe throughout WWII, left to his son.Įntitled "Unternehmen Barbarossa," it was a post-war account of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 written by Paul Karl Schmidt, once the Third Reich’s chief press spokesperson and one of its most important propagandists, who after the war adopted the pen name, Paul Carell. When I think about the moment we are in, my thoughts return to a book bound in green linen. (Courtesy of Julie Lindahl) This article is more than 1 year old. ![]() Julie Lindahl’s grandfather wears the dark coat in the foreground. ![]()
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