The year is 1963. The place, Hamburg, Germany. Following the suicide of an elderly Jewish man, freelance newspaperman Peter Miller (Jon Voight) ends up with a diary that documents the unspeakable crimes of cruelty, torture, and mass murder perpetrated by S* Captain Eduard Roschmann (Maximilian Schell), commandant of the notorious wartime death camp at Riga, Latvia. A personal manhunt to track down Roschmann leads Miller into the very heart of ODESSA, a powerful secret organization formed by the S* to protect and re-establish its fugitive members throughout the world. And when Miller finds Roschmann, he learns that the former Nazi is now the leader of an arms of strategic international import.