A Nazi officer tries to catch a serial killer attacking prostitutes.

A prostitute, who is also a German agent, is brutally murdered in Warsaw in 1942, and Major Grau of German Intelligence investigates three top-ranking Nazi generals: Kahlenberge, Seidlitz-Gabler, and Tanz, a ruthless sadist. Major Grau's persistence in bringing to justice one murderer during wartime irritates the High Command, and he is transferred. Two years later, the three generals and Grau are all present in Paris when the pathological Tanz murders a second prostitute. Aware that Grau is still on his trail, Tanz blames the crime on Hartmann, his orderly, who is having an affair with Seidlitz-Gabler's daughter Ulrike. After fleeing from Paris, Tanz uses the failure of the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler as an excuse for killing Grau and naming him as one of the traitors involved in the plot. Years later, after his imprisonment as a war criminal, Tanz arrives in Hamburg for a neo-Nazi rally. He is confronted by Inspector Morand of the French police who, during the war, helped Grau with his investigation. Morand produces Hartmann, who identifies Tanz as the murderer of the Parisian prostitute. Faced with inevitable disgrace and humiliation Tanz kills himself.