This film was produced to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Soviet army's defeat of Nazi fascism.  This victory ultimately allowed for democratic antifascist transformation and socialist revolution in East Germany.

A murder has been committed in Pension Boulanka, a famous guesthouse for artists and circus people.

This film continues the story of radio operator Ludwig Bartuschek from The Sailors' Song. Near the end of the Weimar Republic, Bartuschek (Erwin Geschonneck) is working as a mechanic in the Sperber airplane plant.

Bello is an unemployed young man living in Berlin in the early 1930s. Although his girlfriend Frieda is underage, she goes out onto the streets in order to support both of them. A police commissioner uses this knowledge to blackmail Bello into acting as an informer for him.

This documentary profiles Dr. Walter Becher, who was a member of the West German parliament and spokesperson of the Sudeten German Homeland Association, an organization representing ethnic Germans displaced from Czechoslovakia.

A Jewish chief surgeon in Berlin, Professor Mamlock believes in reason, humanism and his country. As 1933 begins, he remains blind to the increasing anti-Semitism around him. He is troubled by those with opposing political views and throws his communist-leaning son out of the house.

During the final weeks of World War II, the eleven-year-old orphan Heinrich sets out on a trek lead by the old fisherman Komarek. When Heinrich is suspected of betraying someone liable for military conscription, Komarek reluctantly takes the boy under his wing.