Twelve years after The Big One, SAC is an organization in crisis. Developing defenses have placed its bombers at risk. SAC is gambling on a new concept of bomber to restore its power, the B-58 Hustler. Outside America, Nazi Germany has been devastated by nuclear fire but the remnants of its armed forces still fight on in Russia, forming their own small states. Only one now remains, led by Baron Walter Model, who still has the world's last SS division and a fearsome arsenal of poison gas. In the Pacific, the Empire of Japan is looking at its neighbors with greedy eyes. They are willing to acquire them by any means necessary. That will lead to a confrontation between the world's greatest battleship and the world's last battlecruiser. The Japanese also use the new doctrines of revolutionary warfare but do they understand what they are playing with? And another power is rising, one that may rival Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in malice.