Wandering through the forest, a woodcutter finds a golden fern whose seed turns into a beautiful woman - they fall in love. After getting drunk in a village feast, he gets to sign up to the army. The fairy gives him a shirt to wear and asks him to swear he will never abandon it. At the war front, he falls in love with the the colonel's daughter and will have to perform various feats to get her attention.

In a remote Slovak village in the closing days of World War II, a schoolteacher and his young wife find a wounded Russian parachutist in their front yard just as the Germans are coming in to occupy their village. As his wife readily becomes involved with anti-Nazi partisans, the schoolteacher collaborates with the Germans in fear.

Pavel, a young student living in Prague in 1942, hides a Jewish girl in his apartment building's attic. Amidst the brutality of the occupying German army, love blossoms between the two. He is her only link to the outside world. Then the two are discovered by Pavel's mother, who forces the residents of the apartment building to decide whether Hana can remain.