During World War II, Johann Moritz (Anthony Quinn), a Romanian gentile peasant, whose pretty wife is lusted after by the village gendarme, is denounced as being Jewish, arrested, and sent to a concentration camp. In the camp, the camp commander mistakes him for a new recruit, a volunteer to the S.S. and he is drafted into the S.S. Ironically, after the war, he is detained by the Allied authorities for his wartime involvement with the S.S.