Autumn 1918: Somewhere on the German Western Front, a soldier squats in a dugout and writes an appeal to turn over his rifles against the enemies in his own country. At the time, Ernst Thälmann is 24 years old. He is trying to unite the workers at a time when the revolution appears to have been betrayed by the Social Democrats and the working class is in danger. KPD founders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht are assassinated, and Thälmann marches at the head of the Hamburg funeral procession. Despite the famine, the police senator wants to prevent a ship with food - an aid cargo from the USSR - from being distributed to the population. But Thälmann is the savior in the emergency, he can arrange the unloading. The film ends with the defeat of the Hamburg uprising in October 1923, which was not considered a defeat, but the beginning of a new stage of the struggle.