The young, forward-thinking doctor Dr. Maerker arrives in a small factory town and is appalled by the prevailing social conditions. The working-class families live in poor conditions and can barely feed their many children. Maerker therefore wants to give a lecture on contraception in the inn, but encounters fierce resistance from his conservative boss, Dr. Witte, who wants to prevent the lecture together with the pastor and the magistrate. Only a severe nervous fever finally persuades old Witte to side with Maerker.

A group of German infantrymen of the First World War live out their lives in the trenches of France. They find brief entertainment and relief in a village behind the lines, but primarily terror fills their lives as the attacks on and from the French army ebb and flow. One of the men, Karl, goes home on leave only to discover the degradation forced on his family by wartime poverty. He returns to the lines in time to face an enormous attack by French tanks.