Viktor Karásek

To Moscow have arrived the participants of the international conference of the zoophilologists and also the international jury which is to elect for the world festival the best performance of the program of Moscow circus. Mrs Whistler (Iva Janzurová), British associate professor, makes her understood with the animals in their language but the Czech professor Ruzicka (Jirí Sovák), though he is capable of using the animals language, prefers teaching the animals the human language. Ruzicka's friend, the poodle Archibald, speaks "in Human" very well. The scientific dispute ends with a bet - if Ruzicka teaches the circus elephant to sing, Mrs Whistler will eat up her hat.

The year is 1943. The war is raging between the Germans and the Allies in North Africa. A truck with a Czech crew, Lieutenant Navara and six soldiers, escapes from the Foreign Legion fortress. Their aim is to reach the Allies and fight against Nazism. The truck is destroyed by a German army plane, which is hit by enemy fire in its turn. One Czech soldier dies in the attack, the driver is badly wounded, and Navara has serious burns on his face. The group has very little water and must reach an oasis that is 60 km away.

At the year 1946, the time of the Nuremberg Process. One of the main actors of the Second World War, who reportedly committed suicide, Adolf Hitler is, however, missing. The Czech doctor Herman (Karel Höger) is kidnapped from Prague and driven to the sanatorium of Professor Rolf Harting (Jirí Vrstála). The sanatorium is a disguised military stronghold, most probably occupied by a Nazi garrison, with prison cells and an execution chamber in the basement. At night, Herman is taken to a patient in whom he, to his horror, recognizes Hitler (Fritz Diez).

It is the summer holiday and little Mísa Horák has taken a few animals from the school's so-called "Corner of Living Nature" home to care for. But when he brings home two Angora rabbits, a starling, a little monkey, a tortoise and a small crocodile, his parents order him to take them away. He is helped by Káta, who offers to place the animals in the child's room of her family's apartment. Mísa leaves for her friend where the animals will hopefully be able to stay. Káta goes shopping. In the meantime, Káta's younger sister Minka wakes up and begins to play with the animals, who gradually run off in disarray.

In a wooden hut used as a canvassing center, members of a children's puppet-theatre group are rehearsing for a production about a journey to the Moon. The goings-on inside the hut and outside are being closely followed by amateur detective Pepik Barnabás. He, however, is the first to be under suspicion when a trunk containing puppets goes missing. The children follow him but, when they catch up with him, they discover he hasn't got it. Pepík offers to help them in their search.

May 1945. On the outskirts of Prague, ordinary people meet Soviet soldiers-liberators with tears of joy in their eyes. In the early days of the lull, someone sadly recalls a pre-war life; someone unexpectedly meets his love; someone is returning from enemy dungeons looking hopefully into the future; and someone, having moved from a tank into a Czech tram, warmly recalls his craft as a car driver... These days, all those who survived the Great War fire swear an oath to keep peace on Earth forever, honoring the memory of those who gave their lives for simple human happiness.

Based on book by Svatopluk Turek.

The happenings in a shoe factory serve as a not very thinly veiled examination of the pros and cons of both socialism and democracy.