On June 6, 1944, the Second SS Panzer Division Das Reich receives orders to reinforce the Normandy front, and the film tracks its march north through France as a case study in Nazi occupation violence. The division's route is marked by massacres, culminating in the destruction of Oradour-sur-Glane, where hundreds of civilians were killed. Interwoven with this advance is the story of French Resistance fighters and SOE operatives, including Violette Szabo, whose sabotage operations slowed the division's progress and helped keep it from reaching the invasion front in time. The film uses period footage, maps charting the division's movement, and historian commentary to reconstruct both the military campaign and its atrocities. It closes on the postwar reckoning: the trials, extraditions, and legal maneuvering that let some perpetrators escape full justice for decades. The result is a detailed account of one of the war's most notorious combat units, balancing tactical history with the human cost inflicted on French civilians along the way.