The emaciated weavers deliver their homework to the factory owner Dreißiger and receive their wages, on which they cannot live and cannot die. Driven by hunger, they ask for more money, but to no avail. Only the young baker and the reservist Jäger put up a fight, and both manage to encourage a large group of weavers to revolt against the factory owner. They break into his house and destroy it, whereupon he flees. The revolt continues, the weavers move through the surrounding villages, where more people join them. A little later, the military arrives to intervene against the angry crowd and restore the old order...

Based on a one act play in five scenes by Wolfgang Borchert, "Draußen vor der Tür" depicts the return of a former German soldier from the Eastern Front, to post-WWII Germany and the sobering realities of de-nazification and "peacetime."