A young woman (Katherine) travels back in time to pre-World War II Germany, intending to kill the infant Adolf Hitler in order to prevent the horrors of the Holocaust. Disguising herself as a housekeeper, she infiltrates the Hitler household, where she experiences the environment that shaped Hitler's warped thinking - his abusive, racist father and his weak, ineffective mother.

But killing a baby is much more difficult than she'd imagined, and though she tries several times to commit the act, she finds herself either unable or prevented from doing it. Finally, she steals the infant out of his crib and though she is followed by the child's nanny, manages to leap from a bridge, drowning both herself and the baby Hitler.

But history will not be changed: the maid spies a mentally ill gypsy woman sitting with her baby, and buys the child, passing him off to the unwitting Hitler parents as their own baby.