Helmut Hoffmann, played by Bill Nighy, and his brother Karl Hoffmann, played by John Shea, grow up against the backdrop of the Great Depression in the late Weimar Republic and bear witness to the Nazi Party’s rise to power. Karl, an unemployed mechanic, is quickly drawn to the movement after hearing Ernst Röhm, played by Michael Elphick, speak at a rally and he joins the Sturmabteilung (SA). Helmut, a university student in Munich, remains wary at first, but his path shifts after a pivotal moment when he witnesses a meeting in which Hitler, portrayed by Colin Jeavons, meets with industrialists and signals the party’s growing influence, nudging him toward the Schutzstaffel (SS).
As Helmut heads deeper into the SS, Reinhard Heydrich, a key figure in the SS’s intelligence arm, played by David Warner, helps steer his career. Helmut is commissioned as an SD officer just before the Nazis seize full control, while Karl has already spent a year in the SA. The brothers’ divergent paths reflect the widening rift between the SA and the SS, with Karl lamenting that the SS is shaping itself as the “party’s garbage collector” even as he remains bound to the SA.
The film’s first major turning point arrives with the Night of the Long Knives, a brutal purge that liquidates the SA leadership and shoots Ernst Röhm. In the upheaval, Karl is arrested and sent to Dachau. Through his SS connections, Helmut manages to secure Karl’s release, but Heydrich warns that Karl had betterShape up or face severe consequences, quipping that he might soon be “running short of friends.” >
The story then moves through the following years toward World War II with a brisk tempo. Kristallnacht is referenced but given only a brief treatment before the narrative shifts toward the grotesque routine of theHolocaust era, including Helmut’s involvement in the selection of prisoners for operations tied to the Gleiwitz incident. The film focuses on the day-to-day mechanics of the regime’s dark machinery, showing how Helmut’s position as an SS officer drives the paperwork and administrative side of atrocity, while Karl’s conscience grows and he is drafted into the Wehrmacht.
As the war unfolds, Helmut ascends to SS-Oberführer, but his disillusionment with the Nazi project deepens. Karl, disenchanted with the regime, deserts from the army around the time of the failed July 20 plot to assassinate Hitler and begins wandering the devastated landscapes of Germany. The narrative follows their parallel arcs—one slipping deeper into the system, the other increasingly estranged from it.
In the final months of the war, Helmut tries to flee Berlin but deserts from the SS only to be killed by an SS patrol as he attempts to escape. The fadeout comes with Karl and his lover Mitzi Templer, Lucy Gutteridge, standing among the ruined streets of Stuttgart. They learn that Karl’s parents and his younger brother Hans, who fought with the Hitler Youth during the Battle of Berlin, are all dead, a sobering reminder of the personal costs of a nation’s catastrophic choices.
The film blends intimate family drama with a sweeping historical arc, tracing how two brothers navigate a century of upheaval, power, and moral compromise. It gradually reveals the ways in which allegiance and resistance clash, and how personal relationships become entangled with a regime intent on reshaping not only a country but the very fabric of humanity. The performances—driven by the tension between ambition and conscience—offer a stark meditation on complicity, loyalty, and the human cost of totalitarianism, all set against a meticulously depicted historical panorama.
