1945, in the final weeks of World War II, in a small village on the island of
Amrum off Germany's
North Sea coast. Twelve-year-old
Nanning Bohm, the eldest child in his family, works in the potato fields or gathers driftwood for firewood to help his mother feed the family. She is a staunch Nazi and in the later stages of pregnancy. He, his aunt Ena, and his two younger siblings had to flee to the island from bombed-out
Hamburg. Nanning's father is an
SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) and is away at war; his wife is left to fend for herself on Amrum, while the villagers secretly listen to proscribed
jazz on the radio. As the war draws to a close, Nanning faces new challenges. Since the birth of his sister and the death of Adolf Hitler, his mother has fallen into a deep depression and refuses to eat. Nanning tries to find creative ways to fulfill her craving for white bread with butter and honey, something he continues to struggle with throughout the movie, as the war has left the island with a severe shortage of all materials. Through bartering, he tries to obtain the coveted ingredients like butter and sugar. The boy gets to know the island, its inhabitants, and the
North Frisian language spoken there further. However, while helping with seal hunting and gutting a rabbit, he often experiences close encounters with death. He learns that his uncle Theo, who gave him a whaling knife at birth, was forced to stay in America because of the Nazis, and that they murdered his fiancée, Ruth. Theo appears to him in a dream and confronts him: "You are not to blame, but you are still involved." As the younger of the two, he bears no personal guilt for his parents' Nazi past, but he cannot escape their legacy and the questions it raises. ==Cast==