The sins of an ordinary man

This is an historical novel. A successful American businessman, having just buried his elderly father, discovers a manuscript that reveals the man he knew as his father, instead of being a wealthy outcast of a prominent eastern family, was instead a former major in the infamopurs Waffen SS - a man tried in absentia and sentnenced to death by the French for actions taken against civilians in the summer of 1944. Thought at first to be cruel hoax he at first sets it aside but somehow can't quite get it out of his mind. In the end he sets out to retrace his father;s steps and in doing so learns the events described were tragically true.