The Kuehns’ story is rooted in the social and legal transformations of Nazi Germany, and just as their own early life story in Germany takes a winding route from financial difficulty to social acclaim and political influence, it is also important to note that the Nazi Party did not immediately enjoy a meteoric rise to power and popularity. It began as only a small but extreme right-wing political party, and after a series of failed attempts to subvert the democratic process, Adolf Hitler and his followers made a botched attempt to seize power directly in 1923. Eventually, they switched tactics and began seeking the popular support that would allow them to take over the system via elections. In 1930, Hitler’s fiery speech-making caught Otto’s interest and compelled him and his family to join the Nazi Party and make its ideology and integral part of their lives. 

Among Hitler’s primary messages to the populace was the assertion that the Weimar government did not have the strength to rebuild Germany in the aftermath of the reparations the country was required to make for World War I. With the advent of the Great Depression, the Nazi Party found many willing listeners from segments of the population that were hardest hit by economic hardship, and they devised organizations that were designed to indoctrinate young people into the ideology from a very early age. To this end, the Nazi Party formed both the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) and the Bund Deutscher Mädel (League of German Girls), which “were developed as Nazi Party youth groups to introduce children and juveniles to Nazi ideology and policy. These youth groups also prepared Germany’s young people for war” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Hitler Youth.” Holocaust Encyclopedia.) After joining the Nazi Party, Otto and Friedel Kuehn unquestioningly immersed their family in these institutions. Their daughter, Ruth, joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel, and Leopold soon distinguished himself among the ranks of the Sturmabteilung (SA), also known as the “Brownshirts.” The violence that he helped to perpetrate there prepared him for a lifetime of fanatical effort in the Nazis’ propaganda office, where he diligently furthered the toxic rhetoric of the party’s ideology.

Specifically, Ruth’s participation in these activities illustrates how deeply the family aligned itself with the regime’s ideology, but the subsequent revelation of her Jewish ancestry became an existential threat with the passage of the Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935. These laws stripped Jewish citizens of their rights and citizenship and criminalized relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. For Ruth, whose biological father was the Jewish architect Martin Punitzer, the laws created an immediate danger. This context of state-sanctioned persecution explains the family’s desperate circumstances, which Nazi official Joseph Goebbels exploited by forcing them into an espionage mission for Japan as the price of Ruth’s safety.