Lieutenant Hans von Witzland and his battalion are transferred from Africa to the Eastern front. The soldiers who are boasting with their recent victories as the train takes them to their new target: Stalingrad. Their first glimpse of Stalingrad is a sobering experience. Worse than the huddled groups of tired, dirty, and wounded Germans is the brutal handling by the Field Police of Russian prisoners of war. When Witzland reprimands a guard, the lieutenant is manhandled, and his protest to the police captain is greeted with a sneer. The squad's first clash with the Russians is a Pyrrhic victory: the carnage is dreadful, and Witzland arranges a temporary local truce to retrieve the wounded and the dead. In the melee, a young Russian finds himself among the Germans. Since he is no real threat, they treat him decently, as they listen to Hitler's boastful speech on the radio. Within minutes, a shell crashes into the room and Witzland, the tough Sergeant Rollo Rohleder, the squad cynic Fritz Reiser, and the latest replacement GeGe Muller, fight their way out of a new Russian encirclement. After another confrontation with the police captain, Witzland is stripped of his officer's epaulets and sent with his friends to a penal battalion that hunts for and defuses land mines in the snow. Offered reinstatement, they participate in a vicious battle, after which they are called upon to execute so-called saboteurs, one of whom is the Russian boy they had once captured. Watched by the police captain, they obediently carry out orders. The lieutenant, Geiger and GeGe attempt to find a way out of the Red Army's trap. Having wandered through the snow and the devastation they eventually return to kill the detested police captain, but not before he has disclosed a cache of hoarded food. The men discover shelves full of bread, fuel and supplies, as well as a captured Red Army woman, who had been tied up, tortured and raped. She speaks perfect German and offers to help them escape the city. It is January 1943, the eve of the German Sixth Army's official surrender.