"I thought fat men were supposed to be jolly."

Klink was too obsessed with self preservation to do that. He was a bureaucrat trying to hold on to a job, not a true believer willing to die for the cause. It takes a lot of dedication and crazy to commit a major war crime for a losing cause.

I always thought it was great, still do, started watching it as a kid with my dad.

" I know nothing"

For those who lived it or had family that did, I get not caring for the show.
Otherwise, it doesn't take any sort of imagination to figure out the whole thing was a spoof. Loosely dreamed up over The Great Escape IIRC. A group to intimidate, harass and irritate the Nazi's. Funny stuff, but if a 100th of the plots were true, the war would have been much shorter.
Just another TV show, like many in the day, mostly forgotten. This one is just goofy enough and PC enough to have survived.

There is a Youtube channel with every episode:  

Hogans Heroes Channel

It is funny. It probably did color my view of officers - enlisted interactions a little, the enlisted guys were not nearly as big a bunch of schemers as you would think. For the time it was not really appreciated for some ground breaking about blacks on TV. Kinch was the #2 in the group, Hogan always turns to him for serious advice. Kinch always reads Hogan and knows the Colonel has something in mind before any of the others. Kinch is also the educated one of the enlisted guys, as the radioman and engineer - and the athlete. Carter is a goofy klutz. LeBeau is a cook and gets stuffed in small places. Newkirk is supposed to be the scheming con man, but usually ends up as the doubter and whiner. When Baker came into the group, he ran the radio but never really got to the Kinch level of confidence with Hogan. The show is under appreciated for the character portrayals. Klink, Berkhalter and Schultz actually fought against the Germans in WW2, so if there was some sensitivity, it was playing them for comedy in a serious subject. Ran 5 years, so was a hit, after all.

I'd love to see a movie reboot, done up semi-serious and believable without the campyness and over-the-top "secret tunnel" gizmos. A WWII German Luftwaffe POW camp with a stellar record, actually run by incompetent officers with an SOE/SO team operating out of it? Who wouldn't want to watch that?

Get rid of the campyness and over-the-top gizmos, and there is no reason to also have incompetent officers/staff to keep "missing" what's happening around them.  That's more of a drama or action movie.  Sounds like something Tom Hanks would sign right up for.

You, sir, are a hero.

I still love the reruns. The mid 50's to the 80's produced some of the best shows ever put on TV.

I'm thinking without Stalag 17 and The Great Escape as more serious treatments of POW camps, Hogan's Heroes wouldn't have been made.


Speaking of radio calls, does anyone else remember, "checkmate king two, this is white rook, over"?

This!

not offensive, not funny

Combat!      

If not for that show, I'd never know Europe was full of Eucalyptus trees!

LOL, no. Action comedy. Officers would be required to be incompetent to align with the original story and to explain how anyone could run an op out of a PRISON

I doubt there is a single episode I have not seen

Was one of my fav shows when I was a young kid