Inside Christine Kuehn’s family, the past was treated like contraband—boxed up, driven to a field, and burned. Then a single letter arrived that refused to stay ash: it claimed her grandfather, Otto Kuehn, wasn’t just a German émigré in Hawaii, but a Nazi-linked spy whose intelligence helped Japan plan the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What follows is a thirty-year hunt through FBI files, buried family records, and evasive relatives who insist, “You don’t want to ruin your life with the past.” Kuehn reconstructs a chilling story that stretches from 1930s Berlin to Oahu: lavish parties masking espionage, coded signals from a seaside home, and a family shaped—and shattered—by ambition, ideology, and silence.
If you like true stories where history collides with personal reckoning, this summary will pull you in fast.
