A lot of great artists have tried to use humor against the Nazis: Chaplin, Lubitsch, Wilder. If you want to see mockery, though, real mockery and scorn, you really can't beat this TV show. Even more than Wilder's original film, Stalag 17, this show ridicules Nazis without mercy. It's a subversive and light sitcom about a bunch of POWs who operate as spies behind enemy lines.
The show manages to capture the dark side of Nazis, specifically the SS. Periodically they come in and threaten to send Col. Klink to the eastern front. Meanwhile, Sgt. Schultz knows the prisoners are up to something, but to acknowledge it would open up a huge can of worms. "I see nothing!" Klink and Schultz are caught between a rock and a hard place, between the evil SS and those damn sneaky POWs. Klink begs Hogan to cooperate and be nice. Meanwhile, instead of escaping to safety--which they could do anytime they wanted to--the POWs sacrifice their own liberty to stay in the prison camp and spy on the Germans.
Hogan's Heroes is broad to be sure. Many of us underrate it. It's not particularly funny or dramatic, but it is enjoyable in the way many TV shows are, and you can easily lose yourself in an episode. What makes it worthy of our time, I think, is that it captures perfectly the mindset we should have about Nazis. Nazis are stupid, stupid, stupid. Over and over the show relishes an attack on the intelligence of Nazis. Oh, you stupid morons, look what we are doing right under your noses. No way are you going to win this war.
You see a lot of Nazis in art. They are our default bad guy, even today, 65 years after the war. But you would be hard-pressed to find any more withering scorn for Nazis than in any random episode of Hogan's Heroes. It is perhaps one of the finest examples of pure mockery in art.
I think much of our pleasure from this show is on that simple basis. "Let's outsmart the Nazis." And yet if you think about it, Col. Klink is a fascinating creation. He's a weak man, a coward, and stupid. But he is not actually evil in the way of the SS. Klink and Schultz are not Nazis so much as nihilists, people who just want to get along in life. "I see nothing!" It's a metaphor for a type of person who wants to avoid conflict at all costs. The repression in that line fascinates. It is, perhaps, an oblique reminder of the German refusal to see what was happening to the Jews. Klink and Schultz avoid seeing what the POWs are so obviously up to, for the same reason they avoid seeing what the Nazis are up to: to see such things would cause problems for them personally. So Klink chooses, on some level, to be a buffoon, and Schultz loves his strudel. They are likable and yet in a certain way reprehensible. It is the humanity of Klink and Schultz-- their weakness, their fear, their basic decency--that makes this show so interesting. We watch as they bounce back and forth between the evil of Nazi Germany and the heroism of the POWs.
While the show undoubtedly works on the cheap level of adolescent thrills--watch as we upstage authority and mock the Nazis--the show also works on a more complicated level of subversion and repression and masks. The POWs often corrupt Schultz with strudel, and then he refuses to see what he has in fact seen. The POWs go further, on occasion saving Klink from the Nazis so as to keep him as commandant. The conceit is that no Nazi can possibly be as dumb, or as complicit, as Klink. Klink in turn defends his own perfect record, how no one has ever escaped from his prison camp. Which is true enough, but only because it is headquarters of a massive spy ring.
The show works on both simple and complex levels. Nazis are mocked without mercy. And yet too the show is all about masks and self-deceit and repression and subterfuge and denial. Much of this swirls around the character of Col. Klink, the buffoon with a monocle and a riding crop. He is unable to be good and unable to be evil. He is too weak to please the Nazis and too weak to stand up to them. He is not a Nazi so much as a facade of a Nazi. His whole camp is a facade. And yet he wants to be liked by the Nazis and liked by Hogan. He wants everyone to like him and he wants all problems to disappear. It is Klink's desire to avoid all conflicts and problems and disharmony--his desire to keep his beautiful facade up at all costs--that makes Hogan's Heroes unusual and fascinating. While it is a simple, even a simple-minded sitcom, it is also one of the more layered comedies you will ever see. In fact that's exactly what it is, since half the show takes place in an underground tunnel.
I remember when I was a kid and I first heard of "the French underground." I figured they were actually under the ground, like the guys in Hogan's Heroes. Good guys in secret tunnels under bad guys is a wonderful and comic visual, a manifestation of id against ego, of rebels against tyranny and oppression. It's silly, yes, but kinda brilliant too.
The show manages to capture the dark side of Nazis, specifically the SS. Periodically they come in and threaten to send Col. Klink to the eastern front. Meanwhile, Sgt. Schultz knows the prisoners are up to something, but to acknowledge it would open up a huge can of worms. "I see nothing!" Klink and Schultz are caught between a rock and a hard place, between the evil SS and those damn sneaky POWs. Klink begs Hogan to cooperate and be nice. Meanwhile, instead of escaping to safety--which they could do anytime they wanted to--the POWs sacrifice their own liberty to stay in the prison camp and spy on the Germans.
Hogan's Heroes is broad to be sure. Many of us underrate it. It's not particularly funny or dramatic, but it is enjoyable in the way many TV shows are, and you can easily lose yourself in an episode. What makes it worthy of our time, I think, is that it captures perfectly the mindset we should have about Nazis. Nazis are stupid, stupid, stupid. Over and over the show relishes an attack on the intelligence of Nazis. Oh, you stupid morons, look what we are doing right under your noses. No way are you going to win this war.
You see a lot of Nazis in art. They are our default bad guy, even today, 65 years after the war. But you would be hard-pressed to find any more withering scorn for Nazis than in any random episode of Hogan's Heroes. It is perhaps one of the finest examples of pure mockery in art.
I think much of our pleasure from this show is on that simple basis. "Let's outsmart the Nazis." And yet if you think about it, Col. Klink is a fascinating creation. He's a weak man, a coward, and stupid. But he is not actually evil in the way of the SS. Klink and Schultz are not Nazis so much as nihilists, people who just want to get along in life. "I see nothing!" It's a metaphor for a type of person who wants to avoid conflict at all costs. The repression in that line fascinates. It is, perhaps, an oblique reminder of the German refusal to see what was happening to the Jews. Klink and Schultz avoid seeing what the POWs are so obviously up to, for the same reason they avoid seeing what the Nazis are up to: to see such things would cause problems for them personally. So Klink chooses, on some level, to be a buffoon, and Schultz loves his strudel. They are likable and yet in a certain way reprehensible. It is the humanity of Klink and Schultz-- their weakness, their fear, their basic decency--that makes this show so interesting. We watch as they bounce back and forth between the evil of Nazi Germany and the heroism of the POWs.
While the show undoubtedly works on the cheap level of adolescent thrills--watch as we upstage authority and mock the Nazis--the show also works on a more complicated level of subversion and repression and masks. The POWs often corrupt Schultz with strudel, and then he refuses to see what he has in fact seen. The POWs go further, on occasion saving Klink from the Nazis so as to keep him as commandant. The conceit is that no Nazi can possibly be as dumb, or as complicit, as Klink. Klink in turn defends his own perfect record, how no one has ever escaped from his prison camp. Which is true enough, but only because it is headquarters of a massive spy ring.
The show works on both simple and complex levels. Nazis are mocked without mercy. And yet too the show is all about masks and self-deceit and repression and subterfuge and denial. Much of this swirls around the character of Col. Klink, the buffoon with a monocle and a riding crop. He is unable to be good and unable to be evil. He is too weak to please the Nazis and too weak to stand up to them. He is not a Nazi so much as a facade of a Nazi. His whole camp is a facade. And yet he wants to be liked by the Nazis and liked by Hogan. He wants everyone to like him and he wants all problems to disappear. It is Klink's desire to avoid all conflicts and problems and disharmony--his desire to keep his beautiful facade up at all costs--that makes Hogan's Heroes unusual and fascinating. While it is a simple, even a simple-minded sitcom, it is also one of the more layered comedies you will ever see. In fact that's exactly what it is, since half the show takes place in an underground tunnel.
I remember when I was a kid and I first heard of "the French underground." I figured they were actually under the ground, like the guys in Hogan's Heroes. Good guys in secret tunnels under bad guys is a wonderful and comic visual, a manifestation of id against ego, of rebels against tyranny and oppression. It's silly, yes, but kinda brilliant too.