Wow! Firstly let me say thank you to the publisher, author, and NG for this copy in exchange for my review. This was such an awesome perspective to the nazi history of Germany. And when I say awesome I don’t mean cool. What a life changer! And the persistence! Secondly this is the opposite of a book (it may also have been a NG book) of how children of the elite nazis were so full of guilt they were changing their last names and denying any possible connections. Having read both of these two books so close together was eye opening. This may sound strange, and I’ll probably say this in many more nazi /holocaust books from now on, but it’s enriching our world history that finally different points of view are finally crawling out of the woodwork. The holocaust wasn’t just the camps. The prisoners, although mostly Jewish, wasn’t only jewish. There was a list of shapes and colors. And the Germans that participated were cowards and weak. The holocaust practically became an industry. I appreciate reading any books about WWII, but esp the sociological aspects.

This was a very emotional and detailed non-fiction read. I really liked how Julie kept the reader involved through the story as she searched for clues about who her family was and why they made particular decisions.

An strong non-fiction read, detailing the author's journey to discover her past.

Raised in Brazil to a German family, the author has been told they were farmers in Germany, Poland, then finally in South America. With her husband's encouragement, she begins to dig into the past, learning that her family is much more than it seems. Her grandparents were both long-time members of the SS and complicit in wartime atrocities.

As Lindahl discovers more about her own family, she also discovers more of what became of the Nazis that escaped to South America and how certain countries allowed them protection. Her journey compiles her to share what she has found, rather than continuing to harbor the family secret.

For those interested in WW2 and the aftermath, highly recommend.

This books to read to me like a treasure hunt of a family history. The author historian Julie, grew up in Brazil always questioning herself and the methods of her grandparents. So she goes on a quest of sorts, What Julie finds on her quest is something she always knew in her heart and never wanted to believe. Highly recommended.

What happens when a generation of people refuses to accept the guilt and consequences for their horrific actions; the next generation, in a mix of trauma and terror, refuses to acknowledge it; and the generation after that is left with instinctual shame fueled by questions they are not allowed to ask? Julie Lindahl tackles exactly that in this chronicle of her multi-year journey across continents and through decades of history to uncover the truth about her German family that wound up in the remote interior of Brazil. She does a wonderful job of conveying the various emotions she had throughout the journey; what's less well-explained is what some of the terms, organizations and locations mean and what their significance was during the Third Reich. I felt like I needed to really brush up on details of that time in history in order to understand some of this book, which kind of took me out of it a bit. Still, this was a really interesting and thought-provoking read.

This was a very good book. I was not sure exactly what to expect, but it turned out to be very good. I liked the way the author developed the characters. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

The Pendulum is an engrossing read. Lindahl embarked on an exhaustive six year journey to uncover the truth about her family's past. She uncovers secrets pertaining to her grandparents and discovers a long lost uncle living on another continent. I couldn't put this book down, it was riveting reading. Many things the author uncovered were very hard to learn and I applaud her determination to pursue her research, no matter how difficult.

While I found the topic of this memoir interesting, the narrative never quite got going for me. There is a great amount of detail and chronological "telling" in this book which I found to make the pace drag and my attention to lag. Ultimately, I discontinued this book before finishing because I found I could not quite engage.

I give The Pendulum by Julie Lindahl 5 stars. I found this book to be compelling, riveting, and difficult to put down. The concept of Nazis having lives and families and descendants isn’t one that crosses my mind often. I also didn’t realize the pain and guilt that their children and grandchildren could carry. It broke my heart for Julie and her family to read about all the pain and turmoil they experienced because of the evil her grandfather participated in. I was rooting for Julie in her search and was inspired by her unrelenting bravery. The book was very well written and I recommend this to anyone who has in interest in world history.

Julie grew up believing she’d done something wrong. She finally learned her grandparents were Nazi SS during the war. They remained unrepentant, and cast long shadows of bitterness over their children and grandchildren.
Her grandfather was a member of the mounted SS, and enjoyed beating Poles. Her grandmother believed the Poles to be dirty and disorganized, and should have been grateful to the Germans for bringing order. To the end of her life, she believed the Holocaust to be a lie; people didn’t have a bad time in the labor camps. It was just Jewish propaganda. The SS men were the best sort.
Nature weeds out the weak and allows only the best and strongest to survive. That’s what the Germans did, according to the grandmother. Now it’s best to let history rest in peace.
This is a sobering look at how the descendants of diehard Nazis struggle to cope with their heritage.

The Pendulum is a personally recounted story of a historian's search for the truth about her family's history during and after WWII. She was born in Brazil where her grandparents had emigrated after the war. The family history was forbidden or glossed over or simply reinvented. She decided as an adult to confront the ghosts of the past in order to try and understand her family and herself more fully.

Author Julie Lindahl is a storyteller and historian and does a meticulous job of describing and documenting her journey to unearth her grandparents' personal involvement in the war as enthusiastic National Socialist German Workers' Party members (i.e., Nazis). As a former Fulbright scholar and graduate of Oxford University, she's a well trained academic with impressive credentials, but what struck me about this book was not the academic precision, but the basic humanity. All families have 'skeletons' lying buried. There are always things which are no-go zones, whether it's a distant relative's drinking problems or their great-great-grandmother's transportation to Australia. Few of those skeletons leave such long shadows as the ones resonating down to the present day from the second world war, at least in the west.

I personally grew up in a family where questions about WWII weren't really allowed (or at least emphatically not encouraged) and it wasn't until I was an adult that I really understood that my paternal grandfather's entire family perished and that he was the only survivor. The trauma and survivor's guilt left him with lifelong depression which also colored my father's childhood and upbringing. Despite the problems, he was my grandfather and I adored him. I can very easily understand the same dichotomy Ms. Lindahl describes in her book. How do you even begin to try to reconcile the person you knew as a loving family member with the history which you objectively know to have happened?

I look around at the political climate and the horribly unthinkable things which are happening in the full light of day today, which would simply not have happened even ten years ago and I shiver. There have been wounds festering for the better part of eighty years which really should have been acknowledged and dealt with long ago. There's a metastasis occurring now, today, in many places in the USA and Europe and if we don't do something, we're destined to go down the same road. It's absolutely chilling.

Anyhow, this book is very well written. It doesn't provide much that will thrill actual historians, it's not a history book. It's emphatically not dry or academic. It's more of a journal. It's not a long book, 256 pages, and I devoured it in a couple of sittings. There is an interestingly eclectic further suggested reading list appended to the end of the book, many of which were previously unknown to me.

This would make a really superlative group or bookclub read.

Five stars, meticulously written, gripping, sad but occasionally humorous as well.

This book was hard for me to get into... It was a thoroughly researched book about the author's journey, but I just didn't enjoy it. Too much information that just seemed to drag on and on. I will say it had to be hard for all family members involved to have to deal with knowing someone in their family was in the SS.