The first manuscript of LE GOUTER DES GENERAUX dates from 1951. The general idea of the plot seems to have come to Vian while he was working on a translation of General Omar M. Bradley's A SOLDIER’S STORY.
In Act I, James Audubon Wilson receives from the government the order to start a war because the country is suffering from a crisis of over-production. He makes all the arrangements only to find out no one has told him who is to be the enemy.
In Act II, Léon Plantin, President, calls into his office three generals: Jackson, The Korkiloff, and The Ching-Ping-Ting. In vain he tries to persuade them of the necessity of a war.
The third act takes place two years later, in a shelter forty meters underground, somewhere in Sweden. There we find Plantin, a Monsignor, and some generals who all manage to kill themselves playing Russsian roulette.
