Winter 1942-1943: The young postman Ernest brings the Second World War on skis in the form of letters from the front to the snowy villages of the Black Forest. Through his work he comes into contact with everyone. With Ernest we see how the people in the village duck away, don't dare to say anything openly against Hitler and the Nazis, the church morally fails, cripples come back from the war and people are picked up who have opened their mouths too wide. The events of the war are never shown directly but we see what the war does to those who stay at home and how much the dictatorship and the news from the front are destroying village life in its winter isolation. Meanwhile Ernst tries to protect his little sister, who has Down syndrome, from the Nazis. And he falls in love with Getrud, whose fiancé is missing, which increasingly puts the two of them in a moral dilemma.
