Sebastian Reinhardt, a young German-American, is yanked from routine army duty in America to serve as an interpreter at Nuremberg's Palace of Justice in 1945. He hears the stories of the infamous Nazi killers and war makers, who face prosecutors determined to bring them to justice, and encounters the towering figures of twentieth-century legal, political, and military history, among them Justice Robert Jackson, Albert Speer, Hermann Goering, and the dark, untried shadow of Adolf Hitler. As the trial unfolds, Sebastian must come to terms with his family legacy and national identity.