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The weirdness is that after many years, the German government finally allowed Hogan’s Heroes to be aired in Germany, with a little censorship. For example, they were overdubbed when they said “Heil Hitler”, with silly expressions, like “How high is the corn?”

Oddly enough, Robert Clary, who played Corporal LeBeau, had as his birth name Robert Max Widerman, a Jew, and as a child he was incarcerated in a French concentration camp. His parents and other family members were killed there, and he has an identity tattoo from the camp on his arm.

All four actors who played Germans were Jewish.

John Banner had been held in a (pre-war) concentration camp and his family was exterminated during the war. Leon Askin was also in a pre-war French internment camp and his parents were killed at Treblinka. Howard Caine (Hochstetter), who was also Jewish (his birth name was Cohen), was American, and Jewish actors Harold Gould and Harold J. Stone played German generals.

Ironically, although Klemperer, Banner, Caine, Gould, and Askin play typecast World War II German types, all had actually served in the US Armed Forces during World War II — Banner and Askin in the US Army Air Corps, Caine in the US Navy, Gould with the US Army, and Klemperer in a US Army Entertainment Unit.