Two males meet in a Nazi labour camp: half-Jewish teenager Tyl von Pankow, saved from the gas-chambers by the influence of his Prussian grandfather, and Johannes von Svestrom, war-wounded veteran of the Afrika Korps, now sentenced by Hitler to a terrible command. They are trapped together in a nightmare devised to destroy them both, which demands that they relate to each other only as oppressor and victim. But as the insanity of their situation increases and the world around them collapses, they find themselves occupying the most untenable place of all: Middle Ground.