With the death of her mother, eight-year-old Anna ends her childhood: From now on, she has to look after the nine-member family. Deprivation-rich years, which also find no end when Anna marries: Her husband Albert must be a soldier in the Second World War, and the pregnant Anna has to work hard in the farm and care sick relatives. Lonely and exposed to the harassment of the tyrannical mother-in-law, she waits for Albert, with no certainty that he will ever return.

During the Second World War, a small group of students at Munich University begin to question the decisions and sanity of Germany's Nazi government. The students form a resistance cell which they name the "White Rose" after a newsletter that is secretly distributed to the student body. At first small in numbers and fearful of discovery, the White Rose begins to gain massive support after a Nazi Gauleiter nearly incites a student riot after a provokative speech. At this point, the matter is taken over by the German Gestapo, who pledge to hunt down and destroy the members of the White Rose.

A bearded director named EVA, a fictive Rainer Werner Fassbinder, lives in a large house with his cast and crew as he films Dumas' Lady of the Camellias. His accountant informs him he has many unpaid bills and little cash on hand. EVA throws a fit and fires him. He then proceeds to play one person off against another, dismiss with cruelty his recent lover Ali, sleep openly with his leading lady Gudrun, and make a direct and public play for his leading man, Walter. He's mercurial, dictatorial, and manic. Will he finish the film, having drawn great performances from his actors through his manipulations, or will his antics set events in motion that spin out of his control?

A young woman wants to know who is responsible for the death of her parents. Ten years ago, little Sonja and her brother Niki Schmitt lost their parents in a car accident. Mayor Gassner provided accommodation for the two at that time. Sonja now returns to her hometown to solve the death of her parents. She blames Mayor Gassner until she learns the whole truth.

Munich, World War II: The young Kati Zeiler runs a small barbershop. Her husband Felix is ​​fighting on the Eastern Front. So Kati draws her daughter Marie alone. A bomb attack destroys the shop and the apartment.

The ex-gymnast and survival artist Emil falls in love with the prostitute Lissy. Through her he meets some criminals whom he can help thanks to his gymnastic skills. But on his rise in the criminal hierarchy, Lissy might fall by the wayside.

A beautiful young detective goes to the rescue of a teacher kidnapped by a former student.

East Berliner Dieter was working at a very low-level factory job when East and West Germany were unified. He has a very ill child to take care of who requires expensive and special treatments that are not covered by the state medical system. When he loses his job in the inevitable downsizing, he is approached by a sinister rich man to perform various off-the-books services for him, including spying on the rich man's wife. Reluctantly, he accepts the role of "friend" to this untrustworthy fellow. His child is becoming steadily worse, so when the requests of his "friend" include violent and unlawful actions, he does not feel able to refuse him outright.

Learning of a Nazi plot to attack Washington, D.C. with a deadly nerve gas, Major Wright leads twelve convicts on a suicide mission deep into occupied France to destroy the secret factory where the poison is made.