The young officer Count Yorck von Wartenburg - he bears one of the most famous names of the German past - awaits his execution as a participant in the conspiracy of July 20, 1944. Von Wartenburg, together with his comrades, suffers infinitely long days of terrible torture, disrespect and humiliation as a death candidate. In a dream, he experiences his escape and the real continuation of his fight against fascist barbarism, for which he must detach himself from his class and is involved in the anti-Hitler front by communists and the Soviet army.

Early 1921: a man is on his way home. Gleb Chumalov, regimental commander, worker and Hero of the Order of the Red Banner, returns to his home town from the Civil War. The victory over the enemies of the Russian people gives him the conviction that a new, better time will dawn overnight. Gleb looks for his comrades from earlier years, but only finds people who are emaciated by their efforts. The cement works where he used to work has been plundered and abandoned. With great effort, Gleb and his comrades try to get the plant up and running again. The struggle seems to begin anew... It is the time after the victory of the “Great October Socialist Revolution“ and the time of building a new society.

In November of 1939, the British consulate in Norway receives documents saying that the Nazis are conducting secret rocket research in Peenemünde. But the British doubt the authenticity of the so called "Oslo report". Thus, the Germans continue their experiments unimpeded. At the same time, resistance groups from France, England, Poland, and Germany try to find and to sabotage the secret Nazi research base. When the first "V 2" rocket is successfully launched, the Allied commanders finally become interested in the "Oslo report".

1831. A village schoolteacher Matthias Spitzbart dreams of the ideal school and writes a textbook on the perfect educational institution. When he becomes principal of a grammar school by chance, he puts his ideas into practice. His almost missionary-like zeal blossoms in wondrous ways, but his family idyll is deceptive. Entangled in his activities, Spitzbart fails to see his wife's affair with pro-rector Mehlmann, daughter Friederike flirts with the trainee teacher, and son Michael's misdeeds are enough to make a mockery of his efforts at exemplary behavior. Teachers, parents and the mayor are of the opinion that he has upset everything that worked before: he is dismissed...

The opera singer Ludwig Löwenhaupt wants a proper festive roast for Christmas, so he buys a goose in advance to feed the whole family. What he doesn't realize, however, is that the children, Elli, Gerda and Peterle, will grow fond of the animal, which is christened Gustje, and will no longer want to eat it. After the "liberation", the "five kilos of meat", which were initially locked up in the cellar, become a pet that the children take to bed with them and communicate with. But shortly before Christmas, father Löwenhaupt still wants to slaughter them. However, as his family protests and his conscience gets in the way, he can't slaughter the goose after all. So Gustje only has to leave a few feathers as proof that she has been plucked, and the opera singer is given another goose that has already been cut up.

In November 1831, the 51-year-old Prussian Major General Carl von Clausewitz burns the first chapters of his autobiography, which he had begun to write at the insistence of his wife Marie. Shocked by the sudden death of his friend Gneisenau, he is forced to realize that at his friend's deathbed he has finally said goodbye to the hopes and plans that had once determined his life and that of his friends...

The fifty-four year old Dora, formerly a vegetable cleaner in the village and now cook in a holiday home, drinks her two glass of beer daily after work - one of the few amenities she allows. Her job as a senior cook takes her very seriously. With her endearing zeal, she writes in her free evenings on a manuscript about mistakes and possibilities of the large kitchen.

In 1923, Judge Böhnsdorf and Inspector Dumke convict 22-year-old Fritz Bondersen of treason, accused of selling military secrets on the testimony of General Director Gotthardt, and sentence him to 15 years in a Zuchthaus. Despite his protestations of innocence, Bondersen can’t produce proof. Two years later, his fiancée Edith Volkmann, aided by journalist Günther Borchert, tracks down a French officer whose eyewitness account could discredit Gotthardt’s statement. Their quest to expose a massive fraud offers Bondersen a final hope for justice.

Russian soldier Grisha escapes from a German prisoner-of-war camp in the spring of 1917. He is caught and is to be shot as a spy. This decision is controversial. The dispute continues. Grisha is executed on the orders of the army high command.

Hans Fallada tells in his published after the war novel "The drinker" the story of the agricultural wholesaler Erwin Sommer, who flees from his narrow bourgeois relations under the burdens of the new times in the kingdom of the king alcohol, whose liberty and independence promises prove a lie - the only truth of the alcohol. On behalf of the WDR television play Ulrich Plenzdorf has adapted Fallada's 1944/45 novel for a film adaptation by Tom Toelle with Harald Juhnke in the main role of Erwin Sommer.