Lanny Budd, dilettante art dealer and secret FDR agent, is home on the Riviera.

Partying among Cape society, has-been Winston Churchill rails against the Nazis and admits he was wrong on Spain; no one listens, except Lanny.

Goring has bought some planes, but cheated on his deal; Robbie and Lanny, in Paris, navigate the minefield of French high politics, where rightists oppose arming as they want accord with Hitler.

Monck manages to pose as the unsuspecting Laurel's chauffeur; they drive a stolen supercharger device out of Naziland.

Lanny meets with Nazi sympathizers and art customers in Detroit including Henry Ford and Father Coughlin.

In London, Chamberlain accepts the need to back Poland, but the democratic countries cannot nearly match Hitler's spending for arms.

Finally the dreaded blitzkrieg hits France: airfields are bombed, "merchant" ships docked in port spew Nazi troops who are directed by local spies; paratroopers land at key points.

Rick and Lanny sail in a convoy of hundreds of vessels of every description to Dunkirk, to rescue wading soldiers off the beach.

After six exhausting days and nights of rescue, Lanny climbs onto a makeshift pier and heads ashore, hoping to contact German soldiers.

Showing no fear and in crisp German, he heils advancing soldiers and manages to make his way to Kurt and Hitler, who says he will invade as soon as France is taken.

Lanny reaches Paris ahead of the advancing armies as De Gaulle and Churchill in London endorse a union of the two countries in the hope of preventing a French capitulation, which fails.

At the Tomb of Napoleon, Lanny watches Hitler in deep contemplation and wonders when the world will be free of dictators.