The time is a cauldron of social and political discord throughout the world brought together in a perfect storm of circumstances. The crash of Wall Street in 1929 provided the catalyst for what would become a worldwide economic depression. Desperate conditions for the world's working classes give rise to popular movements that threaten old social orders. Weak republican governments are incapable of coping. By the late 1930s Europe is again poised to explode into a great conflict. American investigative journalist and photographer Marc Fraser exposes a scandal of high level corruption in Los Angeles. That success leads to a European assignment to cover the rising tensions brewing in Europe in the early 1930s. After covering Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany he covers the erupting civil war in Spain. The Fascist inspired military rebellion quickly degenerates into un-imaginable atrocities inflicted upon Spanish civilians. Reporting while imbedded with the Fascist dominated Nationalist rebel side, Fraser is appalled by the murder, rape, and torture of civilians. Unwilling to bend to the military censors he embarks upon a dangerous attempt to inform the world by smuggling condemning reports and photographs out of Spain. Spain was only the preliminary round to WWII. When France is invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940, Fraser is trapped in his adopted home Paris, once again confronted by a brutal regime.