Historical figures in the book include Isaac Asimov, Wilhelm Canaris, Winston Churchill, Duff Cooper, Anthony Eden, Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Reinhard Heydrich, Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, John F. Kennedy, Frederick Lindemann, George Pegram, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Leo Szilard, and Edward Teller.

Many in the modern aristocracy, corporate dynasties, and others feel they have lost out because of the social transformations enabled by decades of peace and co-operation.

Learning about the original history from his time traveling advisors, Hitler uses these lessons to ensure that Western Europe falls swiftly, followed by dropping a few of the Uptime nuclear weapons to wipe out the Soviet Union.

The group decides that it will build its own time machine to go back and stop the present nightmare of Nazi world domination.

The team starts noticing that events they had no hand in are different (such as the Joe Louis versus John Henry Lewis fight and the death of Pope Pius XI) and with Einstein's help realize that all possible outcomes already exist and all time travel does is take you to one of these other branches.