Plot

Three wounded soldiers are removed from battle and given the task of looking after a fortress in a small coastal town. However, the pressures of isolation begin to take their toll on the men.

Stroszek, a German soldier wounded in combat, is sent in 1944 to a Nazi-occupied Greek island to guard an old fortress, accompanied by his wife, Nora, and two other soldiers, Meinhard and Becker. With nothing to do, they are forced to find ways to occupy their time. They paint their living quarters, acquire some chickens and a goat, and, discovering an ammunition depot full of explosives, make rockets. Becker begins to translate the ancient Greek texts carved in stone around the castle and learns that it was once occupied by pirates who were all hanged; Meinhard devises an elaborate contraption for catching cockroaches, which he executes in military fashion. A mysterious Gypsy appears and gives them a wooden owl whose eyes and ears are agitated by flies imprisoned inside. But the general tedium causes Stroszek to show signs of insanity, and he becomes visibly disturbed after hearing a pianist play Chopin. He then appeals to his commanding officer, who assigns him to patrol a nearby ridge with Meinhard. When they come to a field of windmills, Stroszek goes berserk, firing at the windmills; and Meinhard subdues him. Nora and Meinhard report the incident to the commanding officer, who decides to send Stroszek back to Germany. Feeling betrayed, Stroszek forces Nora, Meinhard, and Becker to leave the fortress and begins firing on the town, even threatening to blow it up. Though his rebellion ends in failure, his descent into madness has produced some "signs of life."

During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.

A wounded German paratrooper named Stroszek is sent to the quiet island of Kos with his wife Nora, a Greek nurse, and two other soldiers recovering from minor wounds. Billeted in a decaying fortress, they guard a munitions depot. There's little to do: Becker, a classicist, translates inscriptions on ancient tablets found in the fortress, Meinhart devises traps for cockroaches, Nora helps Stroszek make fireworks using gunpowder from grenades in the depot. Slowly, in the heat and torpor, Stroszek goes mad, drives the others from the fortress, and threatens the city with blowing up the depot. With care, the German command must figure out how to get him down.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>