In 1958 Angelo, a rich and spoiled boy, enters a religious school, where students are tired of its vice-rector, and the strict rules and old-fashioned teaching methods of priests. Soon, Angelo exerts strong leadership among his peers and incites turmoil among them, helped by intellectual Franco and shy Camma. They expel the prefect from the school, organize a Grand Guignol show, and disappear the corpse of an old professor.

Near the end of World War II, two German deserters are put in an Allied prison camp. When Colonel von Bleicher — the rigid and militaristic commander of German POWs — learns about their desertion, he wants them court-martialed, even if the war has since ended. The uninterested Allied officers oblige him, and the two find themselves facing the firing squad on "the fifth day of peace".