Two soldiers are thrown together and make their way through German-occupied Dunkirk. After several agonising close calls they make it within sight of safety.
A British commando is on a one-man raid to destroy a bomb factory in Nazi-occupied France. He must enlist the aid of French farmers to complete his mission.
A British wartime aviator who cheats death must argue for his life before a celestial court, hoping to prolong his fledgling romance with an American girl.
Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxford-educated son Vin court Carol Beldon, the charming granddaughter of the local nobility as represented by Lady Beldon.
A young doctor, former partisan leader - is he a hero, or a murderer? His wife - a victim, or a minion of a totalitarian regime? And his lover - a political careerist, or a naive single mother betrayed by fate? The dramatic fates of these antiheroes from the era of rise of communism are stories of violence and resistance, weakness and courage, much like the ones that take place today.
After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labour chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service.
Jim Gordon commands a unit of the famed Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group which fought the Japanese in China before America's entry into World War II.
During the time of the Peasants' Wars, the free knight Götz von Berlichingen gets into all kinds of private and political entanglements when he defends the Bishop of Bamberg.