A Maryland mom discovers her familys place in history as Pearl Harbor spies

Like most Americans, Christine Kuehn always mourned the tragedy at Pearl Harbor, haunted by the some 2,400 souls who perished in the stunning Dec.7, 1941, attack.She even made the hallowed site a priority during her 1989 Hawaiian honeymoon, solemnly sailing toward the USS Arizona Memorial and reflecting on the carnage that shaped history.“You think to yourself, ‘How awful for the families that were destroyed.’ It was the first time we’d ever really been attacked on our home soil,” Kuehn told The Post ahead of the anniversary.

“Everybody’s kind of in their own head, thinking about how many souls were lost, how many men were sacrificed.You think, ‘How could this happen?’ ”Kuehn was “blissfully ignorant” about her family’s shocking secret.But when a mysterious letter arrived years later, asking about her family’s involvement in the horrific strike, Kuehn, then a Maryland-based mom of three young children, felt her quiet suburban life turn upside down.With the latest anniversary, Kuehn again feels that acute pain — not because her family bore witness to one of the most tragic days in US history but knowing they were in on it.That bombshell letter set off what would become a 30-year search for the truth — uncovering how her aunt Ruth’s affair with Joseph Goebbels went bust when he discovered she was half Jewish, sending Ruth and her Nazi parents to be spies in Hawaii to help the Japanese orchestrate the then-deadliest attack on American soil, plunging the country into World War II.Kuehn, 62, creates a riveting narrative in her new book, “Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor” (Celadon Books).It’s the astonishing story of how the author comes to grips with her own Nazi relatives in a high-stakes family drama that reads like a spy thriller.Kuehn’s dad, Eberhard, was always reticent about his childhood — born in Berlin in 1926 and raised in Hawaii — whil...