Roosevelt calls William Dodd and offers him the position of US Ambassador to Germany, which Dodd accepts.

The Dodd family arrives in Berlin, where Consul General Messersmith and society columnist Bella Fromm greet them at the station.

Storm Troopers beat American Philip Zuckerman and his German wife in broad daylight, causing her to lose her unborn child.

The Dodd family moves into a Tiergartenstrasse mansion owned by Jewish banker Panofsky, who retains the top floor for himself.

Martha and her companions witness Storm Troopers dragging a shaven-headed woman through Nuremberg streets as punishment for planning to marry a Jew.

Ambassador Dodd formally presents his credentials to President Hindenburg and senses the aging leader's limited enthusiasm for the Nazis.

Dodd meets Hitler in the chancellor's enormous office, where Hitler promises to punish those who have attacked American citizens.

Germany stages a national election in which only Nazi candidates appear on the ballot, with over 95 percent of votes cast in Hitler's favor.

Martha appeals to Messersmith to protect Diels from Himmler's plot; Diels is transferred to Cologne and Himmler seizes control of the Gestapo.

Dodd gives a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce using veiled historical examples to criticize regimes that lead their nations to ruin.

Vice-Chancellor Papen delivers a speech openly condemning Nazi suppression and the erosion of respect for the German people.

Hitler flies to Munich and launches the Night of the Long Knives, ordering the arrest and execution of hundreds of perceived enemies across Germany.

Hitler has SA leader Ernst Röhm executed in his prison cell after Röhm refuses to shoot himself.

President Hindenburg dies and Hitler immediately assumes the German presidency, cementing his absolute control over the nation.

Roosevelt yields to State Department and German pressure and recalls Dodd from Berlin, forcing him to leave before the year ends.

William Dodd accepts Roosevelt's appointment as ambassador to Germany and arrives in Berlin with his family, hoping to live modestly and finish his history book. As the Dodds settle in, they encounter Nazi violence against Americans and Jews firsthand, and Dodd begins pressing the German government for accountability. Dodd meets Hitler, attends lavish diplomatic functions, and watches helplessly as Germany stages a fraudulent election and dismantles its own civil institutions. He gives a brave public speech criticizing overzealous regimes while warning Washington that Hitler is rearming and preparing for war. The Night of the Long Knives shocks Dodd into realizing Germany cannot be reformed from within, and the deaths of Röhm and Hindenburg seal Hitler's absolute grip on power. Despite his moral clarity, State Department hostility and German pressure lead Roosevelt to recall Dodd, ending his ambassadorship in failure even as history proves his warnings correct.

Ambassador Dodd's rise, warnings, and fall in Nazi Berlin.

Dodd meets President Roosevelt before departing for Germany to discuss war debt repayment and the worsening persecution of German Jews.

Martha boards the ship to Hamburg, weeping for days over everything she has left behind before reviving her spirits with shipboard flirtation.

Martha meets tenacious correspondent Sigrid Schultz, who warns her about Nazi political violence, but Martha dismisses the accounts as exaggerated enthusiasm.

Critical correspondent Edgar Mowrer is pressured by Dodd and Messersmith to leave Germany for his own safety after his reports anger the Nazis.

Nobel Prize–winning chemist Fritz Haber refuses to fire his Jewish scientists as ordered, resigns from his institute, and seeks passage out of Germany.

Dodd declines an invitation to attend the Nuremberg Nazi Party rally, angering State Department officials who consider it needlessly provocative.

Martha begins a romantic relationship with Soviet embassy functionary Boris Winogradov, keeping it quiet because the US has not yet recognized the Soviet government.

Marinus van der Lubbe, the man convicted for the Reichstag arson, is executed by guillotine.

Dodd returns to America on leave, meets with State Department officials, and tries to persuade Jewish groups to cancel a mock Hitler trial in Chicago.

Soviet intelligence operatives decide to formally recruit Martha Dodd by deepening her emotional attachment to their operative Boris Winogradov.

Göring invites diplomats to his enormous estate outside Berlin, staging a spectacle featuring bison, a hunting lodge, and an elaborate tomb for his deceased wife.

The Dodds fear for Martha's safety when the Night of the Long Knives erupts while she is on a lakeside picnic with Boris.

Martha departs for a planned trip to Russia, declaring she has had enough of blood and terror after witnessing the Night of the Long Knives.

Mrs. Dodd dies suddenly of a heart attack at the family farm, with Martha blaming the strain and terror of their years in Berlin.

William Dodd dies at his Virginia farm with his children at his bedside, mourned by those who recognized the truth of his warnings.

Before the Dodds even reach Berlin, Consul General Messersmith is already documenting Nazi violence, and Dodd's pre-departure meeting with Roosevelt reveals America's deep reluctance to confront Germany over its treatment of Jews. Once in Berlin, journalists like Edgar Mowrer are being forced out of the country while critics of the regime are silenced, and the family's social life unfolds against a backdrop of increasingly dire events. The sham arson trial ends with a guillotine execution, Göring stages a theatrical display of power at his elaborate estate, and Soviet intelligence quietly decides to use Boris Winogradov to recruit Martha. Dodd's leave to America forces him into awkward negotiations with a State Department that cares far more about debt collection than human rights, while back in Berlin the Night of the Long Knives erupts with Martha dangerously close to its violence. Martha departs for Russia disillusioned, and Dodd carries on his ambassadorship in declining health until he is finally replaced. In the years after Berlin, both Dodd and his wife die at their Virginia farm, their health and hopes broken by the weight of what they witnessed in Germany.

The supporting moments and characters that shaped the Dodd family's Berlin years.

Consul General Messersmith examines a severely beaten American physician at the Berlin consulate and resolves to warn Washington about Germany's growing martial character.

Martha chooses Berlin over her marriage, telling her husband she had to decide between him and adventure, and could not help the choice she made.

Dodd reads State Department cables from Messersmith detailing Nazi detentions, beatings, and the near-total suppression of Germany's free press before departing for Berlin.

Martha begins an affair with Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels, who confesses to her that all the topmost Nazi leaders spy on one another.

Dodd realizes that landlord Panofsky's real motive for leasing his mansion cheaply was to use the American ambassador's presence as a shield against Nazi arrest.

Dodd confronts Foreign Minister Neurath and warns that Nazi violence against Americans and Jews is causing severe and lasting damage to Germany's international reputation.

Radio commentator HV Kaltenborn, who publicly denied reports of Nazi atrocities, has his own son knocked down by Storm Troopers for failing to salute.

Hanfstaengl arranges a hotel lunch where Martha finally meets Hitler, who kisses her hand but strikes her as oddly dull, self-conscious, and unhypnotic in person.

During a second meeting with Hitler, Dodd realizes the chancellor's peaceful rhetoric is a deliberate strategy to buy time for German rearmament.

Dodd and AP chief Louis Lochner arrange for a British paper to expose Göring's plan to murder arson trial defendant Dimitrov after his acquittal.

Martha visits writer Hans Fallada at his country farm and for the first time sees the stamp of naked fear on a writer's face.

Himmler whispers to Hitler at Göring's wife's elaborate funeral that an assassination attempt has been made against him, pushing Hitler toward drastic action.

Göring holds a press conference after the Night of the Long Knives and casually admits he expanded the purge beyond SA officers to include political opponents.

Martha learns that Boris was executed by his own Soviet government as a victim of Stalin's paranoia and never received her final letter to him.

Martha and her husband Alfred Stern become Soviet spies, flee US authorities, and settle permanently in Prague, never able to return to America.

From the moment Messersmith examines a beaten American physician, the darkness of Nazi Germany begins revealing itself to those willing to see it, setting the stage for the Dodds' arrival into a city already gripped by terror. Martha reaches Berlin ready to dismiss Nazi brutality as revolutionary enthusiasm, but her affair with Gestapo chief Diels and her growing awareness of how completely fear controls German society begin to crack her illusions. Dodd's own illusions crumble in stages — reading alarming cables, confronting Foreign Minister Neurath, and finally grasping during a second meeting with Hitler that the chancellor's talk of peace is cover for accelerating rearmament. Small sharp moments of revelation accumulate across the city: a broadcaster who denied atrocities watches his own son beaten; a writer's face betrays naked fear; a whispered lie at a funeral sets mass murder in motion. After the Night of the Long Knives, Göring's casual press conference admission that the purge expanded well beyond its stated targets strips away the last pretense of legal order. Martha's trajectory ends not in Nazi Berlin but in Soviet Prague, where she and her husband settle as spies, permanently exiled from the country both she and her father had hoped to serve.

The discoveries and pivotal shifts that transformed the Dodds' understanding of Nazi Germany.