The war in 1944 heats up as the tempest of Allied offensive operations rages on three fronts. In Russia, Sergei Kirov turns the wrath of his powerful Red Army to the east, vowing to destroy Ivan Volkov’s Orenburg Federation once and for all after the dastardly attack on Leningrad. In the Pacific, Admiral Spruance leads in the Big Blue Fleet to begin Operation Forager in the Marianas. It leads to the great carrier duel in the Philippine Sea and the landings on Saipan, Tinian and Guam against a determined and desperate enemy. In the West, Operation Overlord is finally cast ashore, but the old familiar battle in Normandy is forsaken for a new campaign, this time in the Pas-de-Calais. The battle for France soon becomes the most dangerous theater of the war, as Patton joins the action again with Operation Thunder in the south. At the height of the crisis, a train makes its way from the heart of the Reich, heading south and west to the German border, but with a most unusual cargo, and the word ‘Wunderwaffe’ is given new meaning on the Western Front.

As the Germans struggle to head off a power struggle and civil war after the death of the Führer, two dramatic meetings are held to decide the fate of the Axis powers. The first is the long-planned meeting in the Eagle’s Nest, where the Generals of OKW face down Himmler and Goring to define a new chain of command for Germany. The second is a secret meeting between Ivan Volkov and Himmler, where the two men plot how best to use the one clear advantage they now possess in the grim struggle ahead, the fire of the atomic bomb. But first, Volkov proposes a bold new plan aimed at stopping the devastating Allied bombing offensive over Germany.

Finally, the outcome of the mission launched by Fedorov and Karpov aboard Tunguska meets with an unexpected complication. Time seems to conspire against them, and Karpov suddenly realizes that the solution to the problem they are trying to solve lies somewhere else. Now the two men are forced to reorient their thinking about the dilemma they face, and plan a final solution to the terrible crisis of their own making.