Johann's War

"After five years they had found freedom again." Adolf Hitler has swept into power and already the democratic mechanisms of the old Weimar Republic have been dismantled. Nazi Germany has risen and Hitler already has his eyes on expanding the Third Reich. Jews, communists, gypsies, and homosexuals are all targets for the new regime. Now in Berlin, Erich is appointed to the SS, where he works with Reinhard Heydrich's Gestapo to make the country fall into line. But haunted by the murder he committed to prove his loyalty to the Reich, Erich is close to crumbling. Only his wife Hannah and new son Heinrich give him reason to keep on going, but when Sabrina Waldner comes into his life he risks everything by beginning a sordid affair. Elsewhere, the first concentration camps form and the endless supply of prisoners are worked and beaten to death. Oliver Rosen finds himself caught in the middle, but years later he's still alive in Dachau. Why did they let him live? What's so special about him? The truth is as confusing as it is relieving. Could it be a decision Erich comes to regret?

"Poland would never be the same again." The year is 1939 and Europe is on the brink of war. The Third Reich gobbles up nations as Britain and France look on with horror. Within the regime, the German people can smell blood as Hitler fulfils every promise he made to them. In the mind of Erich Brandt, one of the leading lights of the SS, Germany is going to be great again. But all is not well for Erich when the first air raid of the war turns into a life and death situation. What appears to be a technical fault with his plane unveils a web of deceit and sabotage. Now Erich must come to terms with the fact that his own men are trying to kill him. Over the border in Poland Johann Brandt and Oliver Rosen join the resistance against the Third Reich. They devise an ambitious plan with the half-mad Englishman Charlie Keeton to rob the Central Bank of Poland to fund their resistance activities. But when war breaks out in the days afterwards all their plans crumble into dust. What will Johann and his friends do to survive when the German eagle swoops down upon them?

"One day he'll get what he deserves." Johann Brandt continues to hide from his brother as the Nazi occupation of Warsaw continues. As the ghetto wall is erected and the Jews are segregated, Johann makes the ultimate sacrifice in an attempt to save them: he joins them in the ghetto. Elsewhere, amongst the muck and the poverty, Oliver Rosen is drawn to a flame in the darkness. Zaneta Krawczak is a young prostitute Oliver takes into the resistance. Romance soon blossoms between them and Oliver becomes smitten. But is Zaneta who she seems and could she be what finally causes the resistance to collapse into the dark tides swirling around it?

"It didn't take long for them both to make a mistake they could never hope to repair." Johann Brandt picks up the pieces of his life after the destruction of his resistance cell. On the run from his SS brother Erich Brandt, he moves around Warsaw never knowing if death is just around the corner. But when a strange neighbour confronts him about Marek Goryl, Johann uncovers a plan that could destroy millions all over Europe. Elsewhere in the city, Erich Brandt is tormented by mysterious phone calls from a man claiming to know about his murky past. With his former love affair out in the open and a terrible realisation that could lead to his own execution, he attempts to find the identity of the man before it's too late. As the war against the Soviet Union heats up, is time running out for both brothers?

"Erich would never forget the day he betrayed the Third Reich." Reinhard Heydrich is dead. And with it the chances of Erich Brandt ever returning from the Eastern front are also dead. Erich struggles to find a way out of the Einsatzgruppen death squads and back to finish the work he had started in Poland, but thousands of miles away and with the Red Army throwing their whole weight against him his chances are ebbing away. Johann Brandt continues to do his best to fight against the occupying German forces in the Polish capital Warsaw. The Nazis have initiated their plan to liquidate the Jewish ghetto once and for all. Now Johann is faced with the task of encouraging the Jews to fight, to fight for their lives. Elsewhere, could the Soviet Union offer one last hope for victory against the seemingly invincible Nazi war machine?

"This is where your Fuhrer led you. Remember that when you die." The resistance in Warsaw has fallen and Johann is left to flee back to Germany with the shattered remnants of the Wehrmacht. Forced to join the forces of evil he has fought against for nearly twenty years, Johann finds himself in Berlin, a city under siege, in April 1945. Elsewhere Erich has fled his posting at Auschwitz in Poland, determined to destroy his wife and take his son far away from the crumbling Third Reich. With the evidence of his crimes concealed, Erich only has to take his family and he can leave the Fuhrer to his end. But with both brothers in a city cut off from the outside world, they're on a collision course for one final showdown as the world burns around them.