The Nazi who confronted Shining Path

Abstract

Until a few years ago, Eduard Spatz's children wondered whether or not to ask the German government for their father's military archive. In a family photograph, Spatz is shown dressed as a soldier in 1944 with a black ink dot hiding his elbow. Before his death in 1994, in another photograph, he appears dressed as an officer, this time without hiding Nazi insignia. This article looks at certains aspects of his life after World War ii. In particular in 1982, when he and his wife, Adriana Cárdenas, resisted a subversive attack on their home in Peru. This armed action was carried out by the leadership of the Communist Party of Peru - Shining Path (pcp-sl), an organization that accused them of being oligarchs and enemies of the people.