While on a spy mission in the Brtitish dominated Caribbean, the young commander of German submarine U-329, from a base in German-occupied Norway, learns by radio from headquarters that Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and Germany has declared war on the United States. Off Aruba, he is ordered to proceed to a small island off the Yucatan for re fueling. There he gets orders to go into US Gulf waters and meet an agent who will direct him to a US target. The captain believes the target, not yet disclosed to him for reasons of secrecy, will be so critical that its destruction will demoralize the US so soon after Pearl Harbor, impact the new war, and be so dangerous it could cost him and his crew their lives, and his chance of ever seeing his sercret Norwegian loved one again. She, pregnant with their child, would face alone the scorn of her family and countrymen for her love of a German enemy. On board, he must daily deal with the animosity of his first officer, an ardent Nazi, who continually disagrees with his combat decisions. By dangerous chance, an American newspaper reporter learns all about the American mission, but is stopped from publishing his front-page story for so-called reasons of national security. He is threatened by the FBI with charges of treason. Washington buries it for decades until the reporter's father, who has become wealthy, unearths the story, and much more, and tells the world in honor of his father and reveals the long odyssey of U-329, its men and the women in their lives.