In the summer of 1944, the Red Army advances from the east towards Warsaw. For this reason, a group of young Poles decide to rebel against the German occupiers. When 18-year-old Stefan loses his job, he joins the resistance out of anger and despair. Together with his friends, he fights against the Wehrmacht in the city centre. They go through a hell of blood and violence, facing a superior force. Soldier Johann Krauss is a wounded army soldier who is being held as a prisoner of the Polish Home Army in a makeshift hospital. He constantly calls them fools and tells them that they will all die. He is freed when German soldiers from the Dirlewanger SS brigade, led by a Schutzstaffel rifleman, enter the hospital. He later finds the Polish resistance fighter Stefan Zawadzki in another makeshift hospital. Stefan has just found a pile of corpses in the centre of the room, and as Krauss approaches, Stefan puts his pistol in his mouth and is ready to commit suicide, but Krauss just looks at him, takes the pistol from Stefan and fires it on the floor, telling the other Germans at the other end of the room that everything is clear. Then he leaves.