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Helmut Käutner's film is an adaptation of a play by Carl Zuckmayer, who based his character of Harras, a general in the Luftwaffe, on a real-life pilot, the aviation pioneer Ernst Udet. In a vintage performance by Curd Jürgens, General Harras is portrayed as a stubborn, power-driven officer, vain, irreverent to the point of recklessness and a womanizer. During the course of WW2 in 1941, and following certain key experiences, he increasingly develops an inner distance from Hitler's regime. He is arrested, then released on the condition that he root out the saboteurs responsible for a series of fighter plane crashes. Harras refuses to denounce the perpetrators, instead plunging to his death in a plane that has been tampered with
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