June, 1941. A small Russian village at the border is living its everyday life - people work, love, squabble, make plans for the future. The war changes all plans, tears families apart, the first victims fall... Some Russian straggling soldiers who managed to stay alive after the first onslaught of the German army make their own war, some of the locals joining them to avenge their murdered relatives and to fight for their native land. The villagers are rent between the threats and executions introduced by the German invaders for helping the guerrillas and the necessity to help these guerrillas who are of their own flesh and blood. German repressions meet stubborn resistance. Walter, a German lieutenant, feels that the tactics of repression are wrong, but his superiors do not understand him. Walter falls in love with a local peasant girl, Dasha, but for Dasha only one man exists - Grigory, head of the local guerrillas. Grigory in his turn is married to Alyona, but not of his won accord. Alyona knows nothing about Grigory's fate after the war begins, and helps a wounded Russian soldier hiding him from the Germans... How will the war cut all these knots?