Revamped 'Hogan's Heroes' has Germans in stitches

August 1, 1997
The Associated Press

Berlin - The wisecracking Col. Robert Hogan and his cohorts fellow POWs in Stalag 13 have been frustrating their Nazi captors for three decades on American TV. But Germans weren't laughing - until now. Hogan's Heroes has become a cult hit in the country as Germans grow more willing to examine the Third Reich. The show about Allied prisoners outwitting their captors at a German POW camp gives them a unique chance even to laugh about it.

To ensure German viewers understand the show isn't meant to be taken seriously, dialogue is reworked to make the Nazis even more ridiculous.

For instance, the "Heil Hitler" salute, illegal in Germany, is replaced with comic phrases like "Adios," "Thanks be to heaven," or "Heil Schnitzler."

In one episode, a reference to dropping "bombs" on London was changed to "condoms." In others, Col. Wilhelm Klink, the camp commander, refers to his cleaning lady who works in the nude - a character that wasn't in the U.S. series.

The monocled Col. Klink and his bumbling sidekick, Sgt. Hans Schultz, speak with regional dialects that play on stereotypes and make whatever they say sound even funnier to the German audience.

A private network, Cable 1, rewrites and dubs the program to play up the jokes. The new version, renamed A Cage Full of Heroes in German, began broadcasting two years ago. It is especially popular with young viewers.

"Some people think it's in poor taste. They don't think you should make jokes about that time," acknowledges 14-year-old Matthias Hamann of Koerborn, southwest of Frankfurt.

But he says he has no problem laughing at the dimwitted Nazis in Hogan's Heroes. "The Germans in this show are typical Germans," he says.

Hogan's Heroes ran from 1965 to 1971 on CBS in the United States and continues in syndication.