A Time to Love and a Time to Die

During the spring of 1944, as a German infantry unit retreats across Russia, Ernst Graeber, John Gavin, finds his conscience revolted by the execution of captured civilians. On his first furlough in over two years, he returns to a bombed-out family home and discovers that his parents are gone.

Calling at the house of the family doctor, the daughter Elizabeth Kruse, Liselotte Pulver, tells him her father is in a concentration camp for an unwise remark. Allied bombing continues by day and by night.

Oscar Binding, Thayer David, an old school friend who is now the local head of the Nazi Party, offers Ernst shelter, food, drink, and women, but Ernst prefers to stay with fellow soldiers billeted in a hospital and to draw closer to Elizabeth. With the help of another soldier, Ernst takes Elizabeth to a restaurant secretly open despite the wartime ban on luxuries. That night, the restaurant is destroyed during a bombing.

Each alone in the world, they agree to an immediate marriage, but Elizabeth’s family home is flattened by bombs, and they take refuge in a ruined church. Elizabeth gets a summons to Gestapo headquarters, which Ernst intercepts and attends as her husband. He is given her father’s ashes, which he secretly buries in the churchyard, though he later confesses to Elizabeth about her father’s death.

Ernst visits Professor Pohlmann, Erich Maria Remarque, his former teacher, and meets Joseph, a Jew on the run whom Pohlmann is hiding. Pohlmann tells Ernst that there is no excuse for the Wehrmacht’s war crimes against Russians and for the German state’s crimes against its own citizens. Later, Pohlmann is arrested after distracting the police to help Joseph escape.

Ernst requests an extended leave from the army to stay with Elizabeth, but his request is denied. On their last night together, the city is bombed again. At Elizabeth’s request, they spend the night together in their lodgings instead of taking refuge in a bomb shelter.

Returning to the front, Ernst finds a fellow soldier who is an ardent Nazi about to shoot captured civilians. As the two are alone, he kills the other soldier and tells the civilians to flee. One of them picks up the dead man’s rifle and shoots Ernst dead. He had not finished reading a letter from Elizabeth, saying that she was expecting their child.

Last Updated: October 07, 2025 at 08:37