The increase in industrialisation in the Germany of the early 20th century made the difference in poor and rich much more apparent. The life of simple people was hard. The focal point of The Girls in Gingham is Guste, who, as a maid, has to look after her lords and ladies. When the First World War breaks out, her husband is conscripted. Guste has to support the whole family by toiling as a hand-grenade maker. The young woman soon grasps that she is working for the continuation of this senseless war. She quits… The Girls in Gingham is a cinematographic journey through time and empire, through war, economic crisis, the rise of Nazi fascism and into a further, even crueller Second World War. It is a tense, moving and dramatic story.