Hogan's Heroes
"Hogan's Heroes" was an American television sitcom set in a German prisoner of war (POW) camp during World War II. It ran for 168 episodes (six seasons) from September 17, 1965, to April 4, 1971, on the CBS network, the longest broadcast run for an American television series inspired by that war.
Bob Crane starred as Colonel Robert E. Hogan, coordinating an international crew of Allied prisoners running a special operations group from the camp. Werner Klemperer played Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the gullible commandant of the camp, and John Banner played the blundering but lovable sergeant-of-the-guard, Hans Schultz.
Overview
Hogan's Heroes centers on U.S. Army Air Forces Colonel Robert Hogan and his staff of experts who are prisoners of war (POW) in 1942. The plot occurs in the fictional Stalag 13, located in an unspecified place in Nazi Germany, where the winter season is permanent. One episode, "Anchors Aweigh, Men of Stalag 13" mentions the camp being located 60 miles (96 km) from the North Sea. Although the nearby town of Hammelburg shares a name with a town in Lower Franconia, this is coincidental. The group secretly uses the camp to conduct Allied espionage and sabotage and to help escaped Allied POWs from other prison camps via a secret network of tunnels that operate under the ineptitude of commandant Colonel Klink and his main Sergeant Schultz. The prisoners cooperate with resistance groups (collectively called "the Underground"), defectors, spies, counterspies, and disloyal officers to accomplish this. They devise schemes such as having Sergeant Andrew Carter visit the camp disguised as Adolf Hitler as a distraction, or rescuing a French Underground agent from Gestapo headquarters in Paris.
To the bafflement of his German colleagues who know him as an incompetent sycophant, Klink technically has a perfect operational record as camp commandant as no prisoners have successfully escaped during his tenure; Hogan and his men assist in maintaining this record so they can continue with their covert operations. Considering Klink's record, and the fact that the Allies would never bomb a POW camp, Stalag 13 appears to be a very secure location. As a result, the Germans often use the camp for high-level meetings, to hide important persons and develop secret projects. Klink frequently has many other important visitors and is temporarily put in charge of special prisoners. This brings the prisoners in contact with many important VIPs, scientists, spies, high-ranking officers, and some of Germany's most sophisticated and secret weapons projects such as the Wunderwaffe and the German nuclear weapons program, of which the prisoners take advantage in their efforts to hinder the German war effort.
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