This film is set in the summer of 1943 in the Dutch town of Limburg which is occupied by the Germans. In the opening scene, two adolescent boys, Turr (Maas Bronkhuyzen) and Lambert (Joes Brauers), are pretending to be armed soldiers in the woods. The two friends derive great pleasure from exploring caves and throwing rocks at the trains that rumble through the countryside. They periodically are forced to join other townsfolk in a cellar during air raids.
The bond between the two boys is broken when Maartje (Pippa Allen) arrives to stay with relatives. Although Lambert is the first to talk to her at school, she eventually chooses to become intimate with Turr. He is troubled when he discovers that his mother, father, and brother are working for the resistance movement and have not told him about it. Meanwhile, things are getting tougher for Lambert whose father, as mayor, is collaborating with the Germans who are rounding up Jews to send to concentration camps. When Turr learns that Maartje is a Jew, he empathizes with her position as an outsider in the community.
Director Denis Botts has adopted Jacques Vriens's children's novel for the screen. The opening section of Secrets of War brought to mind the boys in John Boorman's Hope and Glory living in London during World War II. They were swept away by the adventure of the war — the air raid sirens, the descent into shelters, the danger in the streets and collecting shrapnel. Here the two boys are thrust by circumstances to take sides and to stand against each other. Yet throughout this war story, we also recognize universal feelings of adolescence: the need to be liked, the desire to fit in, the joy of having a special friend, and the jealousy that can arise when someone else takes our place.
Robert Coles, who has done many studies and interviews with kids, has noted: "Children have always been, and still are, a mirror to us — ourselves writ small." Botts and company manage to draw us into this story about friendship, courage, forgiveness, and trust by giving us three characters with whom we can identify with and cheer on.