Donald Pleasant. (The Great Escape) really was a R.A.F. pilot who was shot down, held prisoner and tortured by the Germans.
Posted on 07/12/2006 10:08:10 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
COLONELS Klink and Hogan and Sgt Schultz of the sitcom Hogan's Heroes have done real PoWs of the Nazis no favours, a federal minister says.
(Australian) Veterans' Affairs Minister Bruce Billson said that thanks to Hollywood, those in German and Italian prison camps in World War II were wrongly perceived by many as having had a fairly easy time.
Mr Billson, 40, said after launching this year's Weary Dunlop Medical Research appeal that he watched repeats of Hogan's Heroes as a child.
But he had a totally different view as he now considered whether European PoWs should be given a one-off $25,000 compensation payment.
Survivors of Japanese captivity, who were often subjected to barbaric cruelty and slave labour, won the payment in 2001 after a long campaign.
It was extended to 14 Korean War prisoners or spouses last year.
But the Federal Government has so far refused to include World War II European PoWs, who were mainly RAAF and RAF airmen and Diggers captured in Crete, Greece and North Africa.
"I think it's likely Hogan's Heroes has done a bit of a disservice," Mr Billson said.
"Col. Klink and Sgt Schultz haven't done much good, really."
"It has added to a false impression that the only ones who really suffered were the prisoners of the Japanese.
"Images of jolly good old chaps, the PoW camp band, men getting Red Cross parcels, creates a different impression than the reality in Europe."
Mr Billson said many Australians suffered "hardship, horror and brutality".
"Conditions varied. It depended on the location, the time, and Red Cross were involved only when it suited the captors," he said.
"This interests me and I've asked for people to come to me with more specific information."
PoWs were sent on long, hazardous marches in the frozen 1944-45 winter as the Germans fled the Russians.
Others were forced to perform gruesome tasks cleaning up bomb-ravaged cities.
Some British PoWs were held at the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp.
And four Australians were among 50 PoWs murdered by the Gestapo after they escaped from Stalag Luft III.
Their story was told in Paul Brickhill's book The Great Escape, which became a hit movie of the same name in 1963.
It is believed Mr Billson will also consider a Canadian report on European PoWs.
The RSL and Ex-PoW Association said the $25,000 payment was one of their six budget priorities this year.
Ex-PoW Association national secretary Cyril Gilbert said he liked watching Hogan's Heroes.
But Mr Gilbert said it was no joke that 862 surviving European PoWs and their 1278 widows had not been compensated. More were dying every month.
Past Veterans' Affairs ministers had used the lower death rate of men in Europe compared with that of prisoners of the Japanese as a reason to stall on compensation.
"They've been like Sgt Schultz: 'I know nothing, I know nothing'," Mr Gilbert said.
"The European PoWs have been discriminated against plainly, and that has split the veterans' community.
"In my opinion, the majority of European PoWs suffered more than those who were in Singapore for the war.
"Germans abided by the Geneva Convention only when they wanted to -- not too often."
Mr Gilbert and RSL national president Maj-Gen Bill Crews welcomed the fresh approach by Mr Billson.
"Hogan's Heroes created a very wrong impression of imprisonment under the Germans, like it was some holiday camp," Maj-Gen Crews said.
"We believe all those men suffered significantly at different times."
Mr Gilbert said it would be as foolish to judge German stalags by Hogan's Heroes as it would be to judge Japanese slave labour by the Bridge on the River Kwai.
I hear ya. Something that tragic must be difficult to talk about.
Depends on what age group you're thinking about. I loved HH as a kid -- watched it every day, in syndication. And although I know better now, it did shade the way I looked at the Nazis. Not only were they loveable bumblers -- even the Gestapo-- but they had cool uniforms, cool cars, cool equipment, and a really snappy drum beat. What's not to like about that?
Folks who were adults when HH was originally aired might have known the difference, but I didn't. My impression of the Germans, and the truth about what they were really capable of doing, were miles apart -- and that despite the fact that I was raised in a community where the Germans were the default "bad guys."
My grandfather happened to be an IG in the European theatre, and he had a stack of ghastly photographs of what the Gestapo and SS really did. It took that to show me that my naive HH-derived ideas about the Nazis were horribly wrong. Not that these applied to the POW camps, per se, but German brutality was there for me to see.
So I'd say this guy actually has a point -- many, if not most, of the guys who'd vote on these things are far removed from the reality, and I'd wager that very few of them had the advantage of several nights of nightmares from that stack of pictures.
Well... There was this one gal who always showed up at the door in a see-through baby-doll negligee - she was hot, too.
And the gals in the strip joint down the street ordered a lot of pizza. It was always the same story: "oh, she's up on stage right now, why don't you sit here for a few minutes until she's finished"...
Strippers tipped really well. Not that it really mattered, of course... ;-)
(the manager had to assign the strip club runs - we might have fought over them if she didn't)
The funniest one was when all of the guys were out on deliveries, and Stacy had to do the stripper run. They tried really hard to hire her (beautiful, and built like a you-know-what).
I have always liked Stalag 17.
THere are a lot of bloody dills about who are influenced by just about anything...
No, but it might land you in the 31st century with a robot and a cyclops.
No, that's an entirely DIFFERENT kink, one of the few that the late Bob Crane apparently DIDN'T enjoy. . .
When he spoke of Hogan's Hero's he would laugh and say, they don't have any idea.
The movie made about him was SO ...uncomfortable. That's the only word that I can come up with when I think about it.
The guy's got a valid point, though. The folks who are voting on this stuff now, were forming their views of the Nazis 30-40 years ago. And, like me, they probably watched Hogans Heroes every day after school. It shaded my perception of the Nazis, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.
For legislation like this, I think a yes/no vote comes down mostly to a matter of personal perceptions and emotional responses -- and a childhood diet of Hogans Heroes might well affect one's view.
I grew up on Hogan's Heroes, but it hit home more when my job took me to Germany twice or 3 times a year. Then I did research on the show itself. What they tried to do in Hogan's Heroes is what Roberto Benigni did in "Life is Beautiful".
By the way, the German version is completely sanitized and censored - nothing like the original.
Wasn't Auto-Man's sidekick a "bit", like the one in the great movie "TRON"?
They begged the Americans not to turn them over to their countrymen, because they knew what would happen if repatriated.
Did Get Smart! hurt CIA agents? F Troop insensitive to soldiers? Jeeze! Anyone who thinks anyone thought HH was anything other than a complete farce is a few tacos short of a combo plate.
bttt
That's pretty much the truth...
Donald Pleasant. (The Great Escape) really was a R.A.F. pilot who was shot down, held prisoner and tortured by the Germans.
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