The film focuses on life in a World War II German penal battalion camp somewhere in Russia. The convicts include a heroic doctor unjustly convicted of avoiding military service, an officer who retreated against orders, and common criminals. It shows their life in the camp, clearing mines, living in trenches on the front line.

In the midst of World War II, postman Ludwig Fuchs writes a letter to his former school friend Field Marshal Hermann Göring, urging him to work for peace. He is declared mentally incompetent. After the war, he struggles to shake off the stigma of alleged mental illness. Göring is executed. Fuchs forces the court to examine him: he vandalizes the lobby of Post Office 122 in Munich and is rehabilitated (with full salary compensation for lost years).

Ursula Gothe is the mother of a son, husband Richard is to be promoted soon. Her orderly life in the pretty villa gets out of joint when Ursula discovers a girl's newspaper ad. Is "Suchkind 312" her illegitimate daughter Martina, whom she had lost while fleeing from the East?

The taxi driver Fritz gets to know the millionaire-heiress Iris and marries her against the wishes of her family. They live together in a small apartment and are very happy. But Fritz wants to offer Iris more and thus finds a position as a laborer in a large car factory and ends up making a career for himself as a race car driver. But while he is driving from one victory to another, he is getting more and more estranged from his young wife. As his career starts to go downhill, he notices the mistakes he has made and tries to win Iris back.