The Awful Truth of Family of Spies: The Real Lives of Grandparents
Christine Kuehn's Nonfiction Discovery
The Three-Generation Rule
A friend of mine once speculated that people won't be remembered after three generations. Unless you are born into a famous family, become a celebrity, or a politician, the chances of anyone really remembering you, or actually knowing much about you, decrease as time goes on.
I've thought about the idea of "The Three Generation Rule" often over the last year and recognized the truth in it. How much, after all, do I really know about my grandparents' lives? What did they really do on a day-to-day basis? How did they fit into their community? Were they respected? Did they live quiet lives, or did they yearn to be noticed by others? I may know bits and pieces, but in reality, what I know is an eyelash-width view of their daily lives. And as little as I know about my grandparents, I know far, far less about my great-grandparents.
So I can understand how Christine Kuehn, author of Family of Spies, was unaware, and then horrified, by the actions of her grandparents, her aunt and uncles, and her family's history. It's a scary, TRUE story.
How it all started
In 1994, Christine Kuehn was a young, married woman with two young sons and a loving husband named Mark Schiponi when she received a letter from a California screenwriter who was working on a movie about WWII. He asked her for details about her grandfather Otto's work with the Nazis.
Christine was sure he had the wrong family.
But the more she thinks about it, the more she wonders. She is aware that her father is always evasive when she asks questions about his family, and she begins to put together clues that had been dropped like tiny breadcrumbs over the course of her life. Once, she met with her aunt Ruth, an older aunt. When Christine asked Aunt Ruth about her grandparents, she got answers that differed from the vague responses her dad had always given. Aunt Ruth's answers were delivered with a warning, "You have a good life. You don't want to ruin it with the past." Aunt Ruth tells Christine that she doesn't need to know about Pearl Harbor.
There was an estranged half-brother who showed up on their doorstep, greeted by Christine's father's words: "Don't say anything about my family. They don't know!"
And why would a screenwriter be asking HER questions about her grandfather?
Curiosity pokes and prods Christine until she and her husband, Mark, make a trip to a bookstore. They pull volume after volume of World War II history off the shelves and start combing the indexes, dismayed to see that multiple volumes list her grandfather, Otto, his wife, Friedel, and her aunt Ruth as German spies. Her uncles, Leopold and Hans, were listed, too. Hans was even touted as "probably the only bona fide child spy in history."
Christine began to understand why her father, Eberhard, never talked about his family and gave only the briefest, vaguest answers when questioned.
The decades-long quest to understand
Christine Kuehn began a decades-long quest to decipher the scattered clues about her family and find the truth. All she knew from her dad is that his family came from Germany but moved to Hawaii when he was a young boy.
Sometimes uncovering the truth hurts.
Christine uncovered facts she probably would have preferred stayed hidden.
Her paternal grandparents, Otto and Friedel Kuehn, were a German couple and staunch supporters of Hitler's new regime, with Otto vying for some of the top offices in the new Reich. They were sent to Japan, where they were paid exorbitant amounts for providing intelligence to the Japanese about the American military base, the ships, the routines, the number of men present, and innumerable small facts that might be useful if the Japanese were to attack.
The more Christine learned, the more appalled she was.
There was no doubt. Her grandparents were well-known spies.
Her grandparents had even pulled their adult daughter, Ruth, into active missions of espionage, expecting her to escort, chauffeur, flirt with, and date American servicemen. The Kuehns were known for their lavish parties hosted at some of the most glamorous places on the island. Top military officials, servicemen, and politicians were invited, and the alcohol always flowed. People talked.
No family is perfect...
No family is perfect. My own family lore includes the story of a great-grandfather who was shot during a store robbery and a moonshiner in-law who did time in a federal penitentiary. But, to my present knowledge, the family history does NOT include any spies that made the bombing of Pearl Harbor possible, destroying a naval base and its ships, killing 2400 people, both military and civilian, and injuring 1100 more. Lives were altered. The world was forever changed.
Christine Kuehn walks us through the often painful process of uncovering the truth of her family's role in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was so overwhelming and so difficult to bear that she actually put the project aside for years at a time. Then new evidence would surface. A new question would be asked, and she'd pull out the research and dive in again.
One of the things that any memoirist or biographer wrestles with is how to tell the most sordid secrets. Would it be better to be reticent and leave the truth buried?
She was ashamed and worried about what people would think once they knew, but she forged ahead.
I am glad that Christine Kuehn had the guts to come out with the truth. I learned so much....
What I learned from reading Family of Spies...
I've read a lot of World War II books, mostly historical fiction, but a few nonfiction ones as well. But most of the stories I've consumed are focused on Germany, the countries it invaded, the Resistance efforts, and the European front. I really didn't know much about the Japanese involvement.
I had no idea that there was so much intelligence being collected by active agents on both sides before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I had absolutely no understanding of the hundreds of people around the globe trying to steal information from other countries. Living in the quiet countryside of my little Midwestern bubble, it's a difficult concept to accept. I struggle to think of spies then or now and to believe that espionage happens every single day all over the world. Certainly not mine, I tell myself!
One of the most interesting elements...
Belonging to a book club forces me outside of my comfort zone because it introduces me to authors and books I would NOT have chosen on my own. Family of Spies is one that I would never have picked up if it had not been required reading for my book club.
I am so glad I read it because I learned so much!
The book includes fascinating supplemental material. One section includes family photographs detailing their lives. We get to see the faces of the people we've come to know and glimpse what was going on behind the scenes. Another section in the book shows newspaper clippings, FBI and government documents, along with correspondence that document the family's actions.
Second thoughts
My sister loves researching genealogy, and we've talked about collaborating on a Historical Fiction book that uses the lives of our ancestors living in the Ohio River Valley after the Civil War.
But now I'm asking myself, "If I do in-depth, detailed research, what would I find? Could we handle the truth?"
If you like history and World War II stories, this is definitely a book for you. The writing is simple and straightforward, but the details are powerful. Lives are destroyed. Families are splintered. Winners and losers are declared.
Otto Kuehn and his "Family of Spies" definitely chose the wrong side, shaming their descendants for generations.
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Family of Spies was published in 2025 by Celadon Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers. Get it here:
If you live near me in the East Central Illinois area, you can drop us a note on the Facebook Page of Silk and Spine Bookstore and Boutique in Danville, Illinois, and let us know you want a copy. We'll put one aside for you!
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