It is the year 1936 and the Spanish Civil War is raging. When the German commander of an international brigade is badly wounded he gives his five comrades a message which he divides up and secretes into in five cartridges. All five shells must reach the battalion in order for the message to be relayed. But Frenchman Pierre can’t bear the heat of the Sierra. When he leaves their hide-out to drink from a well he is hit by an enemy bullet.

An American transport squadron led by former General Lee supports the French colonial army in Vietnam in return for high pay. Originally their mission was only to help the wounded, but as the advance of the Vietnamese liberation army puts the French under increasing pressure, they also fly ammunition - in return for even more money and in defiance of international law. Chief pilot Bryk refuses to fly, secretary Flessy becomes the unscrupulous general's mistress after one lover after another fails to return from a mission, and the rest of the squadron is shot down during an ammunition flight. The French army shows up at the camp to arrest the interpreter Thao for espionage. Bryk rescues her and flees with her to the liberated part of Vietnam.

The magnificent cow Senta has escaped from an LPG. Matuschek, a single farmer, joins the search. However, the valuable animal is not found and is believed to have strayed across the border into Poland. Meanwhile, Senta is in Matuschek's barn. His maid Mathilde and neighbor Dattelmann have captured her and brought her there. Matuschek conceals a letter to Poland because of the supposedly border-crossing cow and is embarrassed when the cattle farmer Franze Flohr discovers the cow in his barn. Nevertheless, Matuschek and Franze become a couple who also become closer to the LPG.

Erich Kubak is an excavator operator at the lignite plant. A technical weakness in the excavator, which repeatedly leads to production downtime, is causing problems for everyone. Erich works on an improvement, but this is not accepted by the chief engineer. On his own initiative, Erich carries out an experiment and causes a great deal of damage. He is dismissed as excavator operator and then resigns. Meanwhile, his son Ewald, who also works at the plant, manages to interest the chief engineer in his father's improvement proposal. Together they work on perfecting it. When Erich finds out about this, he returns to the factory.

A film about the historical uprising of the seamen in Kiel: During the Russian October Revolution of 1917, German and Russian soldiers start to solidarize with each other. By disarming the officers, machinist Henne Lonke and stoker Jens Kasten prevent the attack on a Russian freighter. When German admiralty gives out orders for operation "Nibelungen", which would lead the German fleet into a suicidal attack against England and quell the revolutionary spirit, seamen and soldiers from different political backgrounds unite in protest.

At the end of the 1950s, the production of optics in the German Democratic Republic has reached top quality and instigates interest in the West. When national demand rises strongly and at the same time the export to South America heavily decreases, the Volkspolizei - the GDR police force - starts to look into the case. Two seemingly unrelated cases are the starting point for the investigation by second lieutenant Schellenberg of the department for optics racketeering: An old woman who was arrested in the Berlin city railway for trying to smuggle a pair of binoculars to West Berlin, and a dead person in an area of allotments who was involved in obscure dealings with optical devices.