She thought she grew up in a normal American home. Then she discovered her family were Nazi spies
Christine Kuehn grew up in a typical American family and never suspected a thing. A letter from a stranger exposed dark secrets: Her grandfather had been a Nazi officer, her step-aunt had an affair with Goebbels and her grandmother's beauty salon was a front for gathering intelligence for the Japanese, in advance of the U.S. attack on Pearl Harbor

Christine Kuehn's grandfather Otto with her father Eberhard. "My grandfather's membership in the Nazi Party wasn't, as I'd hoped, some passing fancy," she writes in her book, "Family of Spies." "He was committed to the cause."
Christine Kuehn grew up in a typical American family and never suspected a thing. A letter from a stranger exposed dark secrets: Her grandfather had been a Nazi officer, her step-aunt had an affair with Goebbels and her grandmother's beauty salon was a front for gathering intelligence for the Japanese, in advance of the U.S. attack on Pearl Harbor

06:45 AM • January 03 2026 IST
After a long career as a journalist and as a correspondent at CBS News, Christine Kuehn never imagined that the most astonishing and disturbing story she would ever encounter was concealed in the home in which she grew up. It was a typical American household in Jacksonville, Florida, with a big yard and a white fence. Her father, Eberhard, was an insurance salesman who coached the baseball team she played on; her mother, Dickie, was a teacher in the primary school where she and her sister were students.







