At the end of World War II, a French pacifist is arrested for refusing to fight. In prison, he befriends a German priest arrested for murder of a French Resistance fighter. They discuss morality, obedience, and religion.
The antihero "Mr. Karl" tells a "young person", the viewer, his life story while he sits at work in the warehouse of a delicatessen. The narrator increasingly turns out to be an opportunistic follower from the petty-bourgeois milieu, who maneuvered his way through life in the changing course of Austrian history from the end of the First World War to the end of the occupation in the 1950s.
During the anti-Japanese war, truck driver Lee Sing's secret mission is to transport weapons and supplies for the resistance fighters. Sing has to deliver a signal gun to guerrillas at ten on that night for launching an attack against the Japanese soldiers. He works for the Ko's family and he has to send the gun to the provincial city to prevent it from being bombed. Sing carries on his vehicle a group of passengers including a Chinese traitor, a guerilla, a compassionate nurse, a comfort woman on the run, a teacher and his pregnant wife. Sing is given a hard time by the Japanese troops on the road. The Japanese ransack the vehicle and they find the signal gun. All the males on board are being interrogated with torture, but the passengers pool their efforts to subdue the traitor and accomplish their mission.
Post-war Germany in 1946 while people are struggling to make ends meet, the film follows Hermann, a war veteran who finds employment at a train station. As he falls in love with an agricultural worker and starts comitting thefts, his fragile psyche seems to fall more and more out of balance.
Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.
Four sisters, each with their different characters, embark on their separate roads to romance. Elder sister has vast experience of romance; second sister is predisposed to vampiness and wantonness; third sister is righteous and of noble character; fourth sister is just reaching puberty and experiencing the pangs of first love. Being sentimental, flirtatious and amorous, the four sisters form a backdrop conducive to songs and tripping the light fantastic.
It is an unknown chapter of the German post-war history: On April 23rd, 1949, the kingdom of the Netherlands occupied German soil as a pledge for demanded war reparations. Part of the annexed territories was also the small municipality of Elten. While the people of Elten were initially afraid of the occupation, the time “with Holland” actually became a miracle of prosperity and economy about which many people from Elten still rave today. The occupation period ended with the largest organized smuggling in the history of the federal republic of Germany. The Documentary shows this in never before released 8 mm footage!