Hitler now lives in an isolated sanatorium in Germany, surrounded by his ostensibly loyal followers, a group of former high-ranking Nazis.

But those men blame him for Germany's defeat and destruction, and have decided that a single death is not satisfactory punishment for Hitler.

The experience drives Hitler into an unbearable mental agony; The doctor decides to put an end to his misery and kills him.

[2] The film adaptation was director Brynych's third work concerned with the atrocities committed during World War II, after the 1962 Transport From Paradise - which dealt with the life in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and was adapted from Arnošt Lustig's autobiographical novel, Night and Hope - and the 1964 The Fifth Horseman is Fear, about a Jewish doctor in German-occupied Prague.

[4] Czechoslovak film critic Jan Žalman wrote that "Doctor Heřman found a solution for himself, but not for the viewer, at least not the one who expected to see evil defeated on the moral level, and not just on the physical one.