A group of people gathers back in the post-war ruins of a luxurious Munich hotel they inhabited at one point or another years before; each trying to cope with the tragic consequences of the war and their own actions.

A car tells its story and the story of its seven owners during the years of the Third Reich.

A priest falls in love with a rich man's daughter.

In Franz Joseph I's Vienna, Captain Eichfeld publishes a witty satire on imperial Austrian army abuses, using the pseudonym "Spectator." It's popular, but Eichfeld dares not reveal his identity, as he wants the hand of conservative General von Trattenbach's daughter. His race rival blackmails both lovers.

In a village near a deadly mountain ascent the people repeatedly have to help climbers in danger who didn't make it to the top, in fact nobody made it yet up there. Hansi Knoteck can't stand anymore the danger after a member of the rescue party dies and demands from Attila Hörbiger that he steps back from participating in his rescue efforts. Finally he relents but the villagers ostracize them. In the meantime Winnie Markus tries to seduce Richard Häußler who makes the life for his wife Viktoria von Ballasko a hell through his infidelities.

As the end of the Second World War approaches and the Soviet Red Army is advancing, a group of concentration camp inmates is helped to escape by a Polish doctor. They hide in a wood where they meet other fugitives, who have been there for months, constantly in fear of being discovered. Out of fear of the German army patrols, they do not dare to leave the forest, even as the food supplies run low.

Elisabeth, wife of a landowner, has kept from her husband for twenty years that their daughter is not his. Rather, she is the result of an affair with a musician she was dating shortly before their marriage. Now this man, by now a famous concert pianist, enters her life again. Elisabeth resists the temptation to sink once again into the arms of her romantic lover. Since she loves her husband, she stays with him and continues to keep her secret...