Hogan Now A Hero In Germany With Some Reworking, Show A Cult Hit

The wisecracking Col. Robert Hogan and his cohorts 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 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.

The show 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. A station first tried to bring the show to Germany in 1992, but it was a ratings flop, largely because of dubbing that audiences characterized as lousy.

A private network, Cable 1, took another shot - rewriting and redubbing the program to play up the jokes. The new version, renamed “A Cage Full of Heroes” in German, began broadcasting two years ago.

Since 1995 - the 50th anniversary of the Nazis’ defeat - German TV has been awash with documentaries examining the Third Reich. A six-part series called “Hitler’s Helpers” garnered critical praise and big audiences when it aired this year.

Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” and Daniel Goldhagen’s book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” also were well received and provoked lengthy, national debates.

Yet with democratic Germany solidly in NATO and the European Union, polls have shown most young Germans also believe it’s time to put the war years behind them.

“I like that the German army is made to look silly,” said Jana Weschenfelder, 21, of Berlin. But she adds that her 72-year-old grandfather, who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1945 as a communist, didn’t find it funny when they watched the show together.

“He’s certainly not a fan,” she says.

“Hogan’s Heroes” staying power in Germany makes it an exception among American sitcoms, which have become increasingly harder to sell.

For example, Cable 1 canceled “Seinfeld,” one of the most successful U.S. shows, after less than a year. The cosmopolitan East Coast humor proved hard to translate, and the show had a only a few thousand core viewers, station spokeswoman Antje Burda said.

Other American favorites such as “Friends” and “Frasier” have a small late-night following on another network, SAT1, but are beaten in the ratings by news shows on other channels.

One exception to the trend is “Married … with Children,” which pulls in nearly 2 million viewers nightly with its sexual innuendoes and doltish, everyman hero.

The dearth of homegrown sitcoms can be traced to the era that “Hogans Heroes” satirizes, according to Lutz Hachmeister, director of the annual Cologne television festival.

“Before the Nazi era, you had a functioning comedy industry in Germany. German films were very funny,” he said.

Then war came and director Ernst Lubitsch and others went to Hollywood, he said. “And Germany is still suffering from those losses.”