In April 1945, during the final weeks of World War II, Willi Herold, a young Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger, narrowly escapes a roving German military police unit bent on shooting him for desertion. After his escape, he stumbles upon an abandoned car containing the uniform of a decorated Luftwaffe captain. He donates the insignia of a commander on his person and moves through the German countryside, presenting himself as an officer on a mission, supposedly ordered by Hitler to gauge morale behind the front lines.
As he disguises himself, he gathers a ragged group of stragglers and leads them with a growing sense of authority, promising the local population a reduction in looting while quietly tightening his grip. The band soon coalesces into a makeshift force that he dubs the Kampfgruppe Herold, a name that marks his ascent into power and the start of increasingly harsh and indiscriminate acts.
Among the troops are [Freytag], a kind, aging rifleman who becomes Herold’s driver, and [Kipinski], a sadistic drunk who relishes the brutality of their new role. With these men, the imposter commander moves from one uneasy situation to the next, blurring the lines between impersonation and real authority.
Their first major episode of violence occurs at a desolate camp filled with deserters awaiting execution. The group seizes control of the camp’s operations, and in a grim display, Herold orders the killings of dozens of prisoners, with Kipinski acting as the principal executioner. The casual brutality unsettles Freytag, who begins to doubt the legitimacy of the uniform and the commander who wears it—his suspicions sharpened when he notices the pant legs have been shortened by a tailor, a small detail that reveals the ruse.
The trajectory turns darker when an Allied air raid razes the camp, forcing the group to relocate to a nearby town. There, they loot extensively from the local population and convert a hotel into a temporary command post under the name Sonderkommando und Schnellgericht (summary court) Herold. Under this self-proclaimed authority, the orders grow more deadly, culminating in the execution of Kipinski as part of the group’s misbegotten tyranny.
A night of hedonistic revelry follows, but the hotel is stormed by military police, and Herold is arrested. In court, he maintains that he acted in defense of the German people, then makes a desperate escape through a window to avoid being sent back to the front lines. The final image lingers on Herold wandering a forest strewn with skeletal remains, and the narration reveals the grim aftermath: after the war, he and several accomplices were sentenced to death and executed by Allied forces.
The closing credits offer a jarring coda, showing the group driving through the streets of modern-day Görlitz in a Mercedes-Benz G3, before stopping to harass passersby on foot, a stark epilogue that echoes the film’s meditation on power, identity, and the danger of unchecked authority.
