It is January 5, 1945. A French freighter is torpedoed in the South Atlantic. By the laws of war, the shipwrecked survivors should be beyond further attack. But when the U-boat commander orders that they be shot, he justifies it as "an operational necessity. " He believes that the safety of his own boat and crew depends on destroying all traces of the sinking. Only later, at an Allied tribunal after V-E Day, are the grim facts fully brought to light in a dramatic confrontation between the sole survivor and the captured German officers.