

It is 1944 in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado, home to a U.S. Army camp that houses several hundred German prisoners of war. Suddenly the town is thrown into shock when the popular local physician George Hanses (Barnard Hughes) is murdered. Judge Stoddard Bell (Harry Norgan) calls in Harmon J. Cobb (Walter Matthau) a down-and-out attorney whose son is fighting in Europe, to defend Wilhelm Geiger (Peter Firth), the German prisoner accused of committing the murder.