AllMovie

In this tragic melodrama, set in Germany at the end of World War II, a schoolteacher's son who has been thoroughly indoctrinated by the Hitler Youth thinks of nothing but enlisting in the army and serving gloriously on the Eastern Front. His father has seen how things stand in Germany, and not only is he no longer a true believer, but he wants to keep his son out of the fighting until the Russians arrive. On the evening before his son is to join his fellow Hitler Youth in a group headed toward the front lines, he kidnaps his son and while living in hiding in the woods he forces the boy to understand something about what is really happening.