Brendan Byers III is a wealthy playboy who desires to serve his country as a soldier, but he has been classified as 4-F (unfit for military service). He enlists volunteers among his employees for a privately-funded mission on the Italian front of the war. Byers poses as the German general Eric Kesselring, with the plan of ordering German troops to retreat and allow the advancing Allied forces to pass. Unfortunately, the impersonation comes with complications. He has to navigate the real general's Italian mistress, while the German authorities are investigating Kesselring's involvement in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.