After years of fighting in the Second World War, German soldier Ernst Graeber goes home on furlough for the first time. He had witnessed and participated in war crimes the Wehrmacht committed against Soviet civilians. He discovers that his hometown has been destroyed by bombings, cannot find his parents and is confronted with civilians living in fear of Nazi terror and allied bombing. Graeber realizes that there is no longer any difference between the war on the front and the one at home. It has truly become total war.

In seeking answers to his questions about guilt and responsibility, he encounters a former classmate who has made a career in the local Nazi hierarchy. And his former teacher of religion Pohlmann is active in the resistance hiding Jews. But even Pohlmann cannot give Graeber an answer.

Graeber and his girl-friend Elisabeth retreat to an "island of hope" which is the original title of this novel. But the idyll doesn't last long, Graeber has to return to the Eastern Front. There, he saves Russian civilians from an arbitrary act of killing and, in doing so, kills a Nazi henchman. He cannot decide whether to desert and change sides and gets killed by one of the civilians he saved.

Remarque's novel depicts the war on the front and at home in 1943.

Originally published in 1954 in a redacted version, this is Remarque's most controversial novel about Second World War.