February 1948. The struggle of decisive social forces for the heart of Europe.

Stanek, a truck driver, is working on a large construction site far from Prague. He hasn't been home for several weeks and is tormented by the idea that his wife is unfaithful. So he sets off to Prague underground and has many adventures along the way. He is stopped by a policeman just outside the building and gives a lift to a group of young people, where he is attracted by a charming girl, a single mother... At home, however, he does not find his wife Ruzena and finally succumbs to the seductions of a neighbour whose husband has left for the night shift. On his way back to the building site on a foggy night, he meets a broken-down ambulance, in which the girl from the youth group who attempted suicide is a patient...

This feature film based on the events of 1938 is a chronicle of the futile efforts of the Czechoslovak president Edvard Benes (Jirí Pleskot), politicians and ordinary citizens, to save the independence and the territorial integrity of the state from the advance of Hitler's Germany. On the 29th of March 1938 the leader of the Sudeten Germans Henlein (Werner Ehrlicher) has a meeting with Hitler (Gunnar Möller). Hitler orders him to intensify pressure on the Czechoslovak government. On the 24th of April in Carlsbad, the Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party) decides upon eight demands that are unacceptable to the Czechoslovak President, since they would ultimately lead to the break-up of the Republic. Benes still shows a certain willingness to negotiate, and Henlein resents this. The Germans are determined to make further negotiations impossible through incidents and violence.

A broadly drawn ideological epic set in the summer of 1947 in the borderlands of northern Bohemia: reactionary elements plot to undermine postwar social change while committed local communists struggle to organize workers and defend the emerging order. The narrative follows several archetypal figures—steadfast party activists, wary peasants, and obstructive reactionaries—whose clashes illustrate the claimed inevitability of working-class victory under communist leadership.