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In 1945, in Washington, D.C., United States Ambassador Alex Hazen retires after a career fraught with mistakes.  Alex and his wife Emily, whose daughter Sarah is away at school, also have a son named Sam, who suffered a leg wound in the war and has come home disillusioned.  The Hazens live with Emily's father Moses, who used to be an idealistic newspaperman, but sold his newspaper out of disgust at the rise of dictatorships in Europe.

One night in April, Alex confesses to Emily that he is leaving her for their mutual childhood friend, Cassie Bowman, a journalist, who recently returned to Washington.  Emily agrees to a divorce, but invites Cassie to dinner, ostensibly to clear up past misunderstandings.  During dinner, they hear a radio news flash announcing Benito Mussolini's death by Italian patriots in Milan.  When Alex celebrates the news, Cassie reminds him that twenty-three years earlier, as a diplomat in Rome, he did not view Mussolini as an enemy to Democracy.

All but Sam then remember being in Rome on October 27, 1922, when Mussolini and his black-shirted "Fascisti" marched on the capital.  Cassie and Moses adamantly oppose the Fascist dictatorship.  Alex, a young diplomat, believes Italy is merely engaged in a civil war, while Emily is interested only in maintaining diplomatic decorum with those who have risen to power.  Alex, who is in love with Cassie, begs her to stay in Rome and marry him, but she refuses because of their political differences.  Moses, disillusioned by the state of world affairs, sells his newspaper after giving Cassie a post in Paris.

A year later, Alex is reassigned to Berlin, and he and Emily marry, although they both admit they are not passionately in love.  In 1928, Cassie is sent to Berlin to research the National Socialist party, which is gaining power, and reports on the inhumane treatment of Jews there.  After her visa is mysteriously canceled, she visits Alex at the embassy, and he naïvely insists that the Nazis will never amass any real power.  In Berlin, Emily and Alex, who have since had Sam, hope to be reunited with Cassie, but she tells Emily that she does not that believe Emily and Alex were ever really in love, and asks not to see them again until they can speak honestly about the past.

In the following years, Hitler gains power, and on 30 January 1933, he is made chancellor of Germany.  Cassie and Alex do not see each other again until 1936, when on 12 November, during the Spanish Civil War, they have a chance meeting in a Madrid café as it is being bombed.  Although Alex is still married to Emily, who has since had a daughter, he swears his love to Cassie, and they kiss.  Before they part, Cassie again makes an unsuccessful attempt to convince Alex that America's policy of nonintervention is aiding the ruin of Europe.

Then, in March 1938, Germany annexes Austria in the Anschluss.  Only after Hitler orders the German occupation of the Sudetenland, in southern Czechoslovakia, is Alex, now stationed in Paris, finally forced to take a stand on appeasement.  As he prepares a report for the State Department, Emily pleads with Alex to avoid war for the sake of Sam.  Alex recommends appeasement, and on 29 September 1938, the Munich Agreement is signed.

Back in the present, Cassie tells Alex that they will never marry because his personality is more suited to Emily's.  Later Sam accuses his father of appeasement in both his personal and professional lives, and blames Moses, his parents and their generation for sending innocent millions to war.  Finally, Sam offers his leg, which is to be amputated, to the cause of democracy.