Honorable knights, fair maidens, and sadistic villains battle for glory and love in this epic adaptation of a famed Polish novel, often considered one of the great works of Polish nationalism. In fifteenth-century Europe, Eastern and Baltic Europe are overrun by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, a fanatical and ruthless German military group intent on conquest and conversion; caught between their boots are a noble prince, a beautiful maiden, and soon all of Poland. Spanning bloody battles, courtly intrigues, and love affairs, and ending with a re-enactment of the famed Battle of Grunwald, a key encounter in medieval European history, Black Cross spectacularly funnels Hollywood pageantry into Polish nationalism. The novel it adapts was written as a call to Polish identity in 1900, when Poland had disappeared after being partitioned among several states. The film, made in 1960, drew further power from the infamy of the Teutonic Order, whose actions and symbolism had been resurrected by Nazi Germany; Himmler idealized the group as a precursor to the SS. Audiences flocked to see their heroes defeat the Order, resulting in Black Cross still standing as one of Poland's most successful box-office films.