From his early childhood, simple-minded Abel is forced into the role of outsider and scapegoat: at boarding school he has to atone for the jokes of others, and as an adult he is wrongly tried as an alleged child molester. But Abel sees these as coincidences that saved him time and again from threatening consequences, and attributes it to a mysterious fate that had chosen him for greater tasks. He believes he has avoided expulsion from boarding school because its patrons had let the school go up in flames, and that he has escaped the penitentiary because the Second World War broke out. When he is sent to East Prussia as a French prisoner of war, Abel finally feels free because he can give free rein to his childish fantasies. The fate of captivity does not depress him. When he is assigned to Göring's hunting farm and finds himself in the midst of the officers and the completely over-excited Reichsfeldmarschall, the deluded man seems to have reached the goal of his destiny. But it is only the defeat at Stalingrad that opens the gates of paradise for this gentle giant: in the form of the drawbridge of the old knight's castle Kaltenborn, where the Nazis breed their elite offspring. Together with his wife Netta, who has a similarly simple disposition, Abel looks after a huge flock of boys, provides food and guards the fire in the dormitory at night. During the day he roams the countryside on his black horse, accompanied by huge Dobermans, always on the lookout for new boys to bring to the castle. Only when the Russian tanks are brought into position directly in front of the castle does it dawn on him that he has been serving the wrong masters.