影片分三章代表三次战争：WWI、WWII和虚构的WWIII： THE DESERTER (segment I) - A film against violence. A young soldier escapes from the horror of battlefield towards his country village, only to find violence there too, symbolised by the bloody killing of a pig. SUNDAY (segment II) - Czechoslovakia during World War II. A farm is occupied by Russian partisans trying to sabotage Nazi troops in the neighbourhood. An itinerant egg seller is shot by the Russians as a spy. News arrive that the war is over. A German patrol enters the village and engages the Russians in a bloody battle. The film episode ends with a sequence showing the return of Soviet tanks to Czechoslovakia. THE NOMADS (segment III) - Nuclear war is apparently raging on the earth. A handful of people including a young girl, all in rags or completely naked are in a fall-out shelter. The "White Hussar" (from segment 1) is there too and says he is Death. The girl wants to protect him from the others who want to get rid of him, and in exchange he leads her to the surface of the Earth which is denuded of any trace of life. The girl dies in a deserted windmill. The old man continues his search for people but soon he, too, dies.