A remote village in Germany shortly before the end of the war.
The village community hears very little about what is happening outside. The children go to school, old men and women, among them 28-year-old Greta and 30-year-old Anni, try to maintain the village economy, younger men are absent.
As it becomes evident that the war is lost, the villagers do not rejoice, but are infected with fear. Normality finally breaks down completely when the children find six
unknown corpses on the riverbank. The inhabitants become increasingly terrified and paranoid about their impending doom as more and more bodies pile up on the riverbank.
The drama reaches its climax when the mayor receives a decree that “the Russians are not to find a single living German”. Whereupon the mayor propagandizes for suicide. The village pastor preaches against it. The villagers are trapped in a strange mixture of despair, fear and hopelessness. A struggle of conscience begins in which everyone wants to do the right thing.