Friedrich, a young Jewish chemist and talented pianist in pre-WWI Germany is sent to England on an espionage mission he doesn't take seriously. Between affairs with various girls, he forms friendships with composers George Butterworth (Meadowfield) and Vaughan-Williams. Forced to flee back to Germany as WWI looms, he joins the Wehrmacht as a sniper. Much about war in the trenches at the Battle of the Somme. Monck unknowingly kills his friend Meadowfield at and is taken prisoner himself. He is sheltered by a former girlfriend (who has borne his child) at his POW camp in the UK. After the war, they marry and return to Germany until in 1933, Monck, as a Jew, is dispossessed of property and work. His wife and child return to England while Friedrich is humiliated by his Nazi masters. He is sent to Theresienstadt (Terezin) and thence to Auschwitz (Buna). He is rescued from the "Death March" away from the approaching Russians. He returns to his wife in England where he falls ill and mentally scarred. He is unable to settle in the knowledge that his wife has fallen in love with an American major. Then he also discovers that it was he, himself, who shot his great friend George Meadowfield at the Battle of the Somme in WWI. He returns to a shattered Germany to try to recover his family property (with the aid of the same US major) and then to "end it all," but meets once more the closet Jewish wife of the German adjutant at Theresienstadt, saves her from a Russian firing squad, and decides to live with her.