Alternating between early-1970's interviews with his wife, priest, and other villagers and re-enactments of his final months, the film follows Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jaegerstaetter's path to martyrdom under the Nazis. The first scene shows his execution, followed by a graveyard tableau in which Franz objects to his priest's praise for a fallen soldier's patriotism. Arguments between Franz and his priest and then with a bishop follow, with the clerics both insisting that he owes military service to his country and that he has no right to choose defiance and certain death. His wife Franziska, the priest, and other townspeople comment on his life.....