Plot Summary

This French-Belgian drama, based on a novel by Odon von Horvath, is set in 1938 in a German city along the banks of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers. It attempts to provide insight as to why certain German youths were so easily lead into becoming Nazis by using two narrators, one a teacher who challenged the movement and another by a student who embraced it. Pabst teaches a group of teenage boys, all of whom seem to be young Nazis. The trouble begins when Pabst and a WW I vet are assigned to take the class to a military camp and a nature outing for urban kids. While there a boy is brutally murdered and they blame one local girl. During her trial, Pabst speaks out against Hitler and becomes pariah. Still he continues investigating the death, at great personal expense until at last he brings the real killer to justice.