In November 1941, on the freezing, brutal Eastern Front of World War II, Red Army Junior Lieutenant Nikolai Ivushkin is given command of a battered T-34-76 after its commander is killed. With only a single tank and a small infantry support, he is tasked with delaying the German advance to defend the Soviet Union. The crew sets up an ambitious ambush for a platoon of German panzers commanded by Klaus Jäger. They manage to destroy six panzers, but in a brutal final duel between their tanks, both vehicles are disabled. Nikolai and the tank's driver are captured, while the rest of the crew is killed.
Two years later, in 1944, Jäger—now a Standartenführer—receives permission from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and Heer General Heinz Guderian to recruit experienced tank crews from Soviet POWs housed in a concentration camp to act as opponents for training the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. Jäger selects Nikolai through the camp's interpreter, a female prisoner Anya Yartseva. When Nikolai refuses, Jäger threatens Anya, and he agrees to join, arguing that it could be a path to escape. He persuades three other prisoners to join: driver Vasilyonok, loader Ionov, and gunner Demyan Volchok. Their first task is to clean away the dead from a recently captured T-34-85, and they discover live shells and grenades hidden in a reserve rack. While burying the earlier crew, they stash the munitions in a cairn near the training ground. Anya provides a stolen minefield map and convinces Nikolai to flee with them.
They retrieve the munitions before the next training exercise and employ a smoke screen to mask their movements. Their first armor-piercing shell cripples a Panther, and they blow up the observation tower, killing most of the occupants. The T-34 powers through the car park, crushes staff cars, and breaks through the main gate. They pick up Anya at a bus stop outside the camp and press on toward Czechoslovakia and the Red Army's lines. They escape an anti-tank gun with only a dented turret.
As night falls, Nikolai suggests breaking up and leaving the tank, but the crew insists on staying together with the vehicle. Hearing German vehicles before dawn, Nikolai sends Anya away on foot and plans to meet her further east. Jäger tries to spot the T-34 from a Fieseler Storch plane, then prepares an ambush with four Panthers in Klingenthal. When the T-34 reaches the town, it disables the first Panther by skipping solid shot into its underbelly. Surrounded by the other three German tanks, Volchok disables one with a grenade. Vasilyonok crashes the T-34 through a building, flanking another Panther and killing it with a point-blank shot. The resulting explosion stuns the T-34 crew, and another Panther trains its fire on them. Volchok fires the gun of the German tank he captured, disabling the third Panther, but Jäger returns fire and Volchok is badly wounded.
Jäger and Nikolai emerge from the tanks, and Jäger throws down his glove, inviting Nikolai to a duel. They face off outside the town over a narrow stone bridge, and both tanks are heavily damaged. The T-34 rams Jäger's tank toward the bridge's edge. The commanders disembark to duel with pistols, and Nikolai spares Jäger. They shake hands, but when Nikolai tries to pull Jäger to safety, Jäger lets himself fall to his death as the Panther plummets from the bridge into the river.
Abandoning their T-34, the crew reunites with Anya and carries the wounded Volchok toward the Russian lines. The film ends with a dedication to the Red Army tank crews of the Great Patriotic War.
