All these activities take place right under the nose of the clueless, inept, and vain Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the camp commandant, who is proud that no escape from Stalag 13 under his command has ever been successful. Hans Schultz, the camp’s first sergeant, is a bumbling but very affable man. He indirectly helps the prisoners in their clandestine operations by looking the other way or taking bribes from them for information.
One of the most interesting things about this television series was the stories of several of its primary cast members who were Jewish.
Robert Clary, who played prisoner Corporal Louis LeBeau, was a Holocaust survivor who was imprisoned at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he lost most of his immediate family, until it was liberated by American troops in 1945.
Leon Askin, who played General Albert Burkhalter and Colonel Klink’s superior officer, lost both of his parents in the Treblinka death camp. He fled his homeland of Austria to the United States in 1940 and later served during World War II as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Forces.
John Banner, who played Sergeant Schultz, escaped from Austria and immigrated to the United States after Adolph Hitler annexed the country to Nazi Germany in 1938, where he later served in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a supply sergeant. He also lost family members to the Holocaust.
Howard Caine, who played the Gestapo Major Wolfgang Hochstetter, served in the U.S. Navy during World War II in the Pacific Theater from 1944 to 1946.
Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink, was the son of famed orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer. Fearing for their safety in Nazi Germany, the Klemperer family immigrated to the United States in 1935. Later, he joined the U.S. Army and served during World War II in the Pacific Theater.
When Klemperer was initially told about Hogan’s Heroes by his agent and auditioned for the role of Colonel Klink, he was not informed that the show was to be a comedy. He took the role on the condition that he would never be portrayed as the hero, but that he would always be depicted as a fool who never succeeded in anything he attempted.
