Paul Gadzikowski
scarfman@iglou.com

Special Daily Index: Hogan's Heroes [ New Reader Orientation ]

5/26/67
archived Daily cartoon
Some people are very offended by one or more elements of HOGAN'S HEROES: the inappropriateness of making a sitcom about a POW camp, the minimalization of the Holocaust by making Nazis out to be silly. As to the first point, I do wonder why they made it a sitcom instead of an adventure drama. As to the second, Werner Klemperer who played Colonel Klink was a victim of Nazi persecution himself and took the part under the condition that the show's Nazis were not to be portrayed as ever winning at anything.

For myself, as this joke suggests, I think that there was in HOGAN'S HEROES an evolutionary step in tv war comedy that may or may not have had to come before there could be a tv war comedy that abandoned silliness for whole scenes and whole episodes.

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