In the last days of the Second World War, an American administrative Lieutenant is captured by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge. Sent to a German Stalag Prison camp, Lieutenant Hart is at once thrust into the social order of POWs, where every man thinks of himself first with bribery and trading with German captors commonplace. When two African American pilots become the first non-white soldiers in the camp, one turns up murdered and the other accused of killing a white sergeant. Lieutenant Hart must then defend the black pilot against charges before an obviously racist American tribunal; unaware that the trial itself is only a front for a completely different plan. Col. William McNamara, the camp's highest-ranking American officer, orchestrates a cunning scheme to escape and destroy a nearby munitions plant.