Gregor Reinhardt is a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front when one of his subordinates is accused of murdering a group of officers, and then subsequently trying to take his own life. The investigation takes him from the devastated front lines of the war, to the rarefied heights of society in Berlin, and into the hospitals that treat those men who have been shattered by the stress and strain of the war. Along the way, Reinhardt comes to an awakening of the man he might be.