Mr. Corell secretly lures the town's twelve defenders away, allowing Colonel Lanser's forces to seize control.

Colonel Lanser arrives at Mayor Orden's house and demands the mayor's cooperation with the occupation.

Mayor Orden and Doctor Winter discover that the town shopkeeper Corell has betrayed the town to the invaders.

Lanser demands Orden order the townspeople to cooperate; Orden refuses, saying authority rests with the people.

Alex Morden kills Captain Bentick at the mine during a confrontation over his refusal to keep working.

Lanser holds a formal trial for Alex Morden in Mayor Orden's drawing room.

Mayor Orden tells Alex the town will give the soldiers no rest until they are gone or dead.

Alex Morden is executed by a firing squad led by Lieutenant Tonder outside the mayor's house.

The townspeople wage a silent campaign of cold contempt and targeted killings against lone soldiers.

The Anders brothers secretly flee the town by stolen boat, heading to England to request weapons.

English planes drop packages of dynamite attached to blue parachutes over the occupied town.

Townspeople use the dropped explosives to destroy multiple sections of the town's coal railway lines.

Corell arrives at the mayor's house with new authority from Lanser's superiors and demands Orden and Winter be executed.

Lanser compromises with Corell's demands and places Mayor Orden and Doctor Winter under formal house arrest.

Mayor Orden is led from the house by Lieutenant Prackle to be executed after explosions echo in the distance.

An unnamed northern European town is swiftly conquered when its few defenders are lured away by a traitor, and Colonel Lanser installs his command in the mayor's house. Mayor Orden refuses to cooperate with Lanser's demand that he order the townspeople to submit, insisting that authority belongs to the people. A miner's act of defiance and the resulting execution convince Orden that the town wants to fight, setting a slow but determined resistance in motion. The townspeople wage a campaign of targeted killings and cold contempt that steadily breaks down the soldiers' morale, while secret contacts are made with England for weapons support. English planes drop explosive packages over the town, and the townspeople use them to destroy the railway lines the occupiers depend on. When a collaborator forces Lanser's hand, the mayor and the town doctor are placed under arrest and Orden is led away to be executed, accepting his fate as proof that the democratic cause cannot be killed.

The core story of occupation, resistance, and execution.

Annie, the mayor's cook, throws boiling water on German soldiers waiting outside Mayor Orden's house.

Colonel Lanser and his five-man staff move into Mayor Orden's house as their military command post.

Corell visits Lanser with a bandaged head and requests to be officially appointed mayor in place of Orden.

Lanser refuses to appoint Corell as mayor, saying Corell has lost all connection to the townspeople.

Alex Morden's wife Molly visits Mayor Orden before the trial to speak about her husband's fate.

Orden proposes exchanging Alex's condemnation for punishment of soldiers who killed the town's defenders; Lanser refuses.

England begins conducting nightly bombing raids on the town's mines to support the occupied population.

Colonel Lanser slaps Lieutenant Tonder after Tonder begins laughing hysterically while questioning the occupation's purpose.

Annie sneaks stolen meat to Molly and warns her that Mayor Orden will secretly visit within minutes.

Lieutenant Tonder forces his way into Molly's home and recites a poem by Heine to impress her.

Molly reveals to Tonder that she is the widow of Alex Morden, the man his firing squad executed.

Children in the town find the blue parachute packages in the snow and bury the explosives for their parents.

Major Hunter reports to Lanser that there are multiple breaks in the railway line caused by the townspeople.

Lanser dismisses his superiors' suggestion to poison the parachuted chocolate, calling it naive and out of touch.

Orden confesses to Doctor Winter that he considered escaping to England but chooses to fulfill his duty as mayor.

Even before the formal meeting between Lanser and Orden, small acts of defiance signal how the occupied town will resist, from the cook Annie dousing soldiers with boiling water to whispered plans of escape. Lanser settles his inexperienced staff into the mayor's house and must immediately manage a scheming collaborator who wants to replace Orden as mayor. Before Alex Morden's trial, his wife Molly seeks reassurance from the mayor, and Orden makes a final failed attempt at a moral bargain with Lanser to spare Alex's life. As winter deepens, England begins bombing the mines, the soldiers' morale collapses, and the townspeople's network of quiet resistance grows bolder. Annie orchestrates a secret meeting at Molly's house, where Tonder reveals his loneliness by reciting a stolen poem and Molly unmasks herself as the widow of the man he had executed. After the English weapons drop, the children of the town bury explosives in the snow while Lanser dismisses his superiors' naive orders, and Orden privately confesses his fear to Doctor Winter before resolving to see his duty through to the end.

The human details and hidden efforts behind the occupation.

Nine of the town's twelve returning soldiers are killed or wounded, completing the town's swift defeat.

Lanser tells Orden the occupation is primarily an engineering operation to extract coal, not a military conquest.

Captain Loft returns to the mayor's house to announce that Alex Morden has killed Captain Bentick at the mine.

Alex confesses at his trial that he felt no guilt over killing Captain Bentick.

An unknown townsperson fires a bullet through the mayor's window and wounds Lieutenant Prackle immediately after Alex's execution.

Lanser orders all weapons in the town confiscated and holds Mayor Orden confined to his own house as a hostage.

Soldiers are forced to patrol only in groups after lone soldiers are repeatedly killed by anonymous townspeople at night.

Lieutenant Tonder demands to know how long they will stay and openly doubts their country's military leadership.

The group gathered secretly at Molly's house devises a plan for the Anders brothers to request small explosives from England.

Molly Morden conceals knitting shears in her dress and kills Lieutenant Tonder when he returns to her house.

Lanser reveals to his staff that their town is the only one in the country targeted with weapons drops.

Major Hunter offers to file a report reassigning Lanser due to overwork, but Lanser refuses and stays at his post.

Mayor Orden and Doctor Winter recite passages from Socrates's Apology together while awaiting their expected execution.

Orden tells Lanser that no matter what is done to him personally, the people will never accept being conquered.

Distant explosions confirm the townspeople are still fighting, and Orden accepts the sounds as his own death sentence.

The occupation begins with a swift and nearly bloodless military victory, but Lanser immediately signals that his goal is coal extraction rather than conquest, a distinction that shapes every tension that follows. The killing of Captain Bentick is announced as a shocking breach of order, yet Alex's complete absence of guilt at trial reveals that the townspeople's resistance is a matter of conviction, not impulse. The moment after Alex's execution, when an anonymous shot wounds Prackle, proves Orden right and triggers increasingly desperate countermeasures from Lanser. The psychological collapse of the soldiers deepens as Tonder openly questions their leadership, and the secret meeting at Molly's house produces both a plan for organized resistance and Tonder's death at Molly's hands. After the weapons drops change the strategic balance, Lanser learns the full pressure his superiors are placing on him but refuses an offer of reassignment, choosing duty over escape just as Orden does. The two men's parallel resolve converges in the mayor's house at the end, where a recitation of Socrates and the sound of distant explosions mark the moment Orden accepts that his execution will only strengthen the cause the soldiers can never defeat.