Surrounded by the postwar ruins of the Third Reich, 22 top Nazi prisoners await trial at the 1945-46 International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany. Dr. Douglas M. Kelley, who studied the essence of evil and the anatomy of the Nazi personality, is among the few people allowed regular contact with the prisoners. There, he develops a complex and close relationship with Nazi war criminal and Hitler’s right hand man, Hermann Goering, a clever and manipulative prisoner who was the highest-ranking Nazi in Allied hands. As the psychiatrist tests and interviews Goering and the other prisoners, he reaches conclusions that shake his assumptions and sows the seeds of his own downfall.