Max Adler is an agent with the American OSS.
The activity takes place, obviously, during the Second World War. Adler is a perfect candidate for being pulled into the Intelligence side of the war considering that while he is decidedly an American in upbringing and in patriotism, his origin and his family roots are German and he speaks the languages and understands the culture perfectly.
We first meet Adler as an American representative to the '36 Olympics in Germany where he as a young man is able to see the sort of totalitarian country Germany had become. Though his family had left that country ten years before and moved to Chicago, Adler has plenty of memories of how things were and is not pleased with how they changed. Especially since Adler is also Jewish. Germany in '36 is not a good place for a Jew and growing worse by the month. A unscheduled and highly ill-advised stroll around Berlin will let Adler see first-hand how bad things were getting.
His narrative leaps ahead over half a decade then, to 1943, and an Adler, now in his mid-20s and wearing an American army uniform, is serving in the OSS. He had already left his father's furniture business as a European sales representative. Now this 6'4" tall very athletic man is using his knowledge of Europe and his native-speaking skill in German to fight the Nazis whose evil he witnessed those years before.
And then there is the delightful and very dangerous Sophie Norcross, a British citizen who officially was disowned by her country due to her espoused backing of fascism but who was in fact working undercover for British Intelligence, using her grandparents' Italian noble heritage as a means of moving more freely in Axis-controlled parts of Europe. This is one very capable operative who plays almost as big and important role in these two adventures as Adler.
Good Lines:
Thought by Adler about was expected of him and his fellow operatives, "Their roles were small cogs in the gears of this war, a reason it was called a war machine."