Editing Operation Barbarossa (section)

===Naming===
The theme of Barbarossa had long been used by the [[Nazi Party]] as part of their political imagery, though this was really a continuation of the glorification of the famous Crusader king by German nationalists since the 19th century. According to a Germanic medieval legend, revived in the 19th century by the nationalistic tropes of [[German Romanticism]], the [[Holy Roman Empire|Holy Roman Emperor]] [[Frederick Barbarossa]]—who drowned in Asia Minor while leading the [[Third Crusade]]—was not dead but [[king asleep in mountain|asleep, along with his knights, in a cave in the Kyffhäuser mountains]] in [[Thuringia]], and would awaken in the hour of Germany's greatest need and restore the nation to its former glory.{{sfn|Childers|2017|pp=470–471}} Originally, the invasion of the Soviet Union was codenamed ''[[Operation Otto]]'' (alluding to Holy Roman Emperor [[Otto the Great]]'s expansive campaigns in Eastern Europe),{{sfn|Riché|1993|pp=267–269}} but Hitler had the name changed to ''Operation Barbarossa'' in December 1940.{{sfn|Kershaw|2001|p=335}} Hitler had in July 1937 praised Barbarossa as the emperor who first expressed Germanic cultural ideas and carried them to the outside world through his imperial mission.{{sfn|Mayer|1989|p=340}} For Hitler, the name Barbarossa signified his belief that the conquest of the Soviet Union would usher in the Nazi "[[New Order (Nazism)|Thousand-Year Reich]]".{{sfn|Mayer|1989|p=340}}