A decade after its defeat, America is occupied by a United Nations peacekeeping force, the United Nations Special Service Unit (U.N.S.S.U.). The U.N.S.S.U. is composed primarily of Eastern Bloc forces, and is overseen in Milford by an East German, Major Helmut Gurtman (played by Reiner Schöne). U.N.S.S.U. troops periodically engage in "training exercises" which are destructive in nature and intimidating to the local population. Those Americans who engage in dissent are stripped of their privileges and sent to exile camps, where they are anathema to the Soviets and their fellow citizens. Association with the exiles is prohibited, although a few brave souls risk their own remaining freedoms by offering humanitarian aid. Production quotas have been imposed, and foodstuffs rationed, with the surplus presumably being shipped to the Soviet Union. Against this background, Bradford ascends to the leadership of Heartland, hoping to reform the Soviet occupation from within; Milford is released from the prison camp, hoping to be reunited with his children and fight against the occupation; and Denisov hopes to "salvage as much as possible" of the old America, while realizing that the U.S. essentially must cease to exist as a nation in order to appease the "old men in the Kremlin."

At great personal risk, Samanov finally convinces the Soviet leadership to accept a compromise plan: no nuclear weapons will be detonated, the United States will be divided into "client states" such as Heartland, and the United States Capitol will be destroyed as a symbolic gesture of the end of America. At the same time, members of the United States Congress are killed in a "terrorist attack" when they refuse to disband their legislative body. After the attack is carried out, Samanov surveys the damage and, sitting in the United States House of Representatives, commits suicide.

Damn, I'm so tired of this "I'm an American" bull! Where was all that patriotism when it counted? Where was that willingness to sacrifice? Nobody wanted to join the damn army to defend the country unless they got paid well! Nobody wanted to give any time to public service unless they could make a career out of it! And I didn't notice a lot of us giving up our lives in the last 10 years!

We are the voice of the new generation. We are the voice of the new people. The destructive ways of the past are gone. We will replace them with our vision of the future. The Party will lead us to the new age. There have been those who have tried to stop the new age. They are the corrupt reminder of the past. They have tried to confuse us with the idea that the old America was a good country. We know that lie. History teaches us that lie. We are grateful to our Soviet brothers who saved the world from destruction, and we can now join them in a world of socialist brotherhood. Everyone will go to school, everyone will have a job, everyone will be equal. No one will exploit or be exploited, and all those who oppose this wonderful vision will be crushed.

In the final episode of the miniseries, Heartland is about to secede from the United States, with other regions to follow. Heartland troops, along with local militia, attack the local U.N.S.S.U. compound, effectively declaring war on the Soviet occupation, and there is mention of a Second American Revolution. The miniseries ends on a downbeat note, however, when Devin Milford is shot and killed as he is about to make a nationwide broadcast calling on Americans to resist the breakup of the United States. Although there is hope that the spirit of America lives on, in the end it appears that the Soviet plan to dissolve the United States will come to fruition.