You’ve probably seen the reruns. The laugh track kicks in as Colonel Hogan outsmarts a bumbling Nazi for the hundredth time. It’s light, it’s campy, and honestly, on the surface, it feels a little bit weird that a show about a POW camp was a hit comedy in 1965. But if you look closer at the actors in Hogan's Heroes, the show stops being just a silly sitcom. It becomes an act of defiance.
Most people think these guys were just Hollywood actors playing dress-up. They weren't. For several of them, those uniforms weren't just costumes—they were reminders of a nightmare they barely survived.
The Jewish Actors Who Played Nazis
It sounds like a bad joke. Why would a Jewish man who fled Hitler's regime agree to put on an SS uniform and a monocle?
Werner Klemperer, the man who played Colonel Klink, actually had a very strict rule. He told the producers he would only take the part if Klink never won. Not once. He insisted that the Nazis be portrayed as complete idiots. Klemperer was the son of the legendary conductor Otto Klemperer, and his family fled Germany in 1933 just as the Nazis were seizing power. He didn't just play a bumbling officer; he was a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Pacific during the war.
Then you’ve got John Banner, the lovable, strudel-munching Sergeant Schultz. "I know nothing!" was his catchphrase, but in reality, he knew far too much.
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Banner was an Austrian Jew. He had to flee his home in 1938 during the Anschluss. While he was making audiences laugh in America, much of his family back in Europe was being murdered in concentration camps. He once said that Schultz wasn't a Nazi, but a representative of the "goodness" that can exist in people even during terrible times. It’s kinda heavy when you realize he was playing a guard in a camp that, in another life, could have been his own prison.
The Real Survivor: Robert Clary
If you want to talk about the most incredible person among the actors in Hogan's Heroes, it has to be Robert Clary. He played Corporal LeBeau, the French chef who was always hiding in the tunnels.
Clary wasn't just "affected" by the war. He was a survivor of Buchenwald.
He was deported from Paris at sixteen. Out of a family of fourteen, twelve did not come back. He spent thirty-one months in concentration camps, and he literally sang for his life. He would perform for the SS guards on Sundays to keep himself fed and alive. On the set of Hogan's Heroes, he wore long sleeves to hide the tattoo on his arm—A-5714.
Think about that for a second. He was acting in a comedy about a German prison camp while carrying the literal scars of a real one. He didn't talk about it for decades, but eventually, he became a lecturer, spending his later years making sure people never forgot the Holocaust.
The Tragedy of Bob Crane
Bob Crane was the "all-American" face of the show. He was charming, quick-witted, and a fantastic drummer. Before he was Colonel Hogan, he was the king of the Los Angeles airwaves as a top-rated disc jockey.
But Crane’s story is the one that really took a dark turn.
After the show ended in 1971, his career sorta stalled. He ended up doing dinner theater and struggled to find another hit. In 1978, he was found murdered in a Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment. The case involved high-tech video equipment (for the time) and a secret life that shocked the public. It remains one of Hollywood's most famous "unsolved" mysteries, though plenty of people have their theories about his friend John Carpenter.
Breaking Barriers with Ivan Dixon
We can’t talk about this cast without mentioning Ivan Dixon. He played Kinchloe, the radio expert.
In the mid-60s, seeing a Black man in a position of technical authority on TV was basically unheard of. Kinch wasn't a stereotype; he was the brains behind the comms. Dixon was a serious actor and a major figure in the Civil Rights movement. He eventually left the show because he felt his character wasn't being given enough to do, moving on to become a powerhouse director for shows like The Bioninc Woman and The A-Team.
The Rest of the Crew
- Richard Dawson: Before he was kissing everyone on Family Feud, he was the Cockney pickpocket Newkirk. He actually wanted to play Hogan but couldn't nail the American accent.
- Larry Hovis: He played the explosives expert, Carter. Fun fact: he was actually a singer and a comedy writer who got the job after someone else backed out of the pilot.
- Leon Askin: General Burkhalter was played by another Viennese Jew who lost his parents at Treblinka.
Why the Background of These Actors Matters
So, why does any of this matter today?
It matters because there’s a persistent myth that Hogan's Heroes was disrespectful to the victims of WWII. But when you realize that the people making the show—the people in the German uniforms—were the very people the Nazis tried to destroy, the perspective shifts.
They weren't trivializing the war. They were mocking their oppressors. For Klemperer, Banner, and Clary, making Nazis look like absolute buffoons was the ultimate form of revenge. It was a way to take the power back.
What You Can Do Next
If you’re a fan of the show or a history buff, here are a few ways to see the actors in Hogan's Heroes in a new light:
- Read Robert Clary’s Memoir: It’s titled From the Holocaust to Hogan's Heroes. It is a gut-wrenching but necessary read that details his time in the camps and how he processed that while filming a sitcom.
- Look for "The Last Laugh": This is a documentary that explores whether it's okay to make jokes about the Holocaust. It features Robert Clary and offers deep insight into why survivors chose comedy as a weapon.
- Watch the Pilot Episode: Pay attention to Larry Hovis. In the pilot, he’s actually a Lieutenant, not a Sergeant, and he’s wearing a different uniform. It’s a cool bit of trivia for the eagle-eyed fans.
The show might be a product of its time, but the men who built it were legends who lived through the worst of history and came out the other side with a sense of humor.