It's 1945 when Berlin lies in ruins as the Red Army ravages its way across Eastern Europe, and the Allies close like pincers on the German capital. But this story begins in a very different Berlin; footage reveals Europe's most dynamic and liberal city in full swing even as the Great Depression sweeps the globe in the early 1930s. Newsreels, propaganda films, and rarely seen private films relate the story of Hitler's rise and his brilliantly aggressive bluffing game with French, British, and Soviet leaders, who were fatally reluctant to confront a newly radicalized Germany.

Paris is occupied along with nearly all of Europe's capitals, but London continues to defy German aggression. A private family's homemade film follows Rose Gowlland, a three-year-old British girl who has already lived through two years of war under the Blitz. Restored, unseen footage follows both sides of the war in the east, as sweeping summer victories turn to frozen winter nightmares outside Moscow. To the south, German forces inflict even more terrible horrors on the Jews of Kiev in a ravine known as Babi Yar - and document their own atrocities. And in the winter of 1941, a shocking, devastating attack in the Pacific brings a reluctant United States into the war. The tables begin to turn, finally, against the German war machine.