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Based on the 1947 book "I.G. Farben", by American author Richard Sasuly, and records from the Nuremberg Trial of the chemical giant I.G. Farben, Council of the Gods is a story about the collaboration between international corporations and German scientists, whose research contributed to the death of millions. Featuring music by Hanns Eisler, electronic sound by Oskar Sala (Hitchcocks's "The Birds") and a script by Friedrich Wolf, the film is powerful in its depiction of the moral dilemmas and lessons of the war, as well as of Cold War propaganda. Chemist Dr. Hans Scholz lives through a tortuous political transformation and maturation process. Finally, he becomes wrapped up in his political neutrality and closes his eyes to the fact that poison is being produced in his factory. Standing before the judges at the Nuremberg trials he has to face the fact that he was partly responsible for the deaths of millions in the gas chambers of the extermination camps.

About the present and past of the largest industrial company in the GDR, the LEUNA-Werke, with a high proportion of historical black and white recordings from 1916 to the handover of the Soviet management to German hands in 1954. The film describes impressively presented and commented the motives for the construction of the Leuna works in 1916, its development into a product supplier for the war industry and the protests of the labor movement in 1921. This only becomes apparent through the takeover of the Soviet Union in 1945 and the controlled rebuilding of the destroyed factory with With the help of the working class in Central Germany, the plant and the region were expanded for the benefit of the people and the republic.