After being freed from a Vietnamese war prison, French Lt. Col. Pierre Raspeguy is sent to help quell resistance forces in Algeria. With the help of the Capt. Esclavier, who has grown weary of war, and Capt. Boisfeuras, who lives for it, Raspeguy attempts to convert a rugged band of soldiers into a formidable fighting unit, with the promise of marrying a beautiful countess if he's made a general.
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
Professor Chardin has just killed a man. Before calling the police to turn himself in, he burns some leaves and a notebook in the fireplace. Secret agents in the street with listening devices flee when the police arrive. The professor refuses to be defended by a lawyer and to explain himself, but his friend Professor Carter and his wife come to his support and he agrees to explain his crime of inventing the H-bomb, the secret of which was stolen from him by his collaborator Rossi at the very moment when he had given up his research, convinced by Albert Einstein's pacifist plea and other personal circumstances.
Michel, a young man of Ukrainian origin, flees the Red Army and joins the International Brigades in Perpignan to fight Franco. He was arrested for being Russian, Communist and deserter. He was wounded by his involvement, but fell in love with an American journalist.
The small South American republic of Guadalarma is under the rule of despot Don Salvador, surrounded by a civil guard, his mistress (La Morenita), his henchman (Don Ramón) and the fortress governor (the venal Don Gaspar). One morning, the city's French jeweler Michel Dumartin receives a visit from a client named José Llanos, one of the regime's fiercest opponents. Llanos is soon denounced and shot dead by Salvador's men. At the same time, Dumartin was accused of complicity with the rebels. Arrested and imprisoned in the fortress, he is ripe for the death penalty.
1944, France experiences its last days of German occupation. A microcosm representative of the various attitudes adopted during this troubled period, some heroic, others less brilliant, the Grégeois family, scattered by the war, will strengthen its ties according to the Allied advance on the territory and the liberation of Paris, with its joys but also its sorrows, because not all of its members will survive the relative chaos that will characterize this end of the world war.
In order for important British admiralty papers to pass into the hands of the Germans, the spy Gordon has the ingenious idea of transforming a lamentable drunkard into a Lady, haughty but submissive to his orders. Stella's transformation is complete, the success extraordinary. Why must a French officer touching the heart of the former pochard bring down the fragile edifice? A submarine is about to blow up, Gordon is shot down and a confessed Stella returns to her horrible taverns to drown her sorrows in alcohol for good.