The Battle of Shanghai in 1937 has been called both the last battle of World War I and the first of World War II, and this film traces how fighting in that city pulled the world toward global war. Rare archival footage of Shanghai's streets and waterfront sits alongside the recollections of people who lived through the battle as children, watching Japanese and Chinese forces fight house to house through their neighborhoods. The film sets the battle in the context of Japan's expansion across China through the 1930s, explaining why historians increasingly point to Shanghai rather than Poland or Pearl Harbor as the true opening of the conflict. It draws on current historical research to reassess the standard European-centered timeline, treating the Asian theater as the war's actual starting point rather than a later addition to it. Interviews with historians frame the argument, while the childhood testimonies give the strategy a street-level counterpart, grounding the shifting front lines in what it felt like to be a civilian caught inside them.