Two males meet in a Nazi labour camp: half-Jewish teenager Tyl von Pankow, saved from the gas-chambers by the influence of his Prussian grandfather, and Johannes von Svestrom, war-wounded veteran of the Afrika Korps, now sentenced by Hitler to a terrible command. They are trapped together in a nightmare devised to destroy them both, which demands that they relate to each other only as oppressor and victim. But as the insanity of their situation increases...