The Hotel is the Grand Hotel de l'Univers et du Commerce and stands on the Adriatic shore of a nameless country. Through its revolving door into its shabbily splendid lobby comes a stranded group representing every political extreme of the 30's. Espionage, power politics and betrayal involve the characters with each other and their surroundings as each group makes a bid for the cache of arms and munitions stored in the hotel. The ending is as ironic and as tragic as the decade it portrays.