On a windy night in 1937, a 17-year-old German naval sub-cadet stumbles upon a gang of ruffians beating up a tramp, whose life he saves. The man is none other than Wilhelm Canaris, chief of German military intelligence, who adopts the young man and dubs him "Cesare" after the character in the silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Even as Canaris subverts the Nazi regime from within, Cesare will have to rescue the girl he loves from Theresienstadt, a cruel ghetto and way station to Auschwitz.