From the devastation of the First World War rises the new nation state of Czechoslovakia.

But the fledgling state contains within it the seed of its own destruction - three and a half million ethnic Germans who feel little or no loyalty to the country.

Two friends, Ernst and Pavel, return from the war to their families in the area of Czechoslovakia known to Germans as the Sudetenland. One is an Austrian from the old Hapsburg Empire, the other a Czech Legionnaire.

Their child