[Aussie Dasher]

He could have a fair point!

[skeeter]

But, compared to the Japanese camps, those in German camps DID have a fairly easy time.

[Chi-townChief]

Man, talk about beating a dead horse; they're all hung up on a show from the 60s, mannnnnnnnnn!!!!!

[Lunatic Fringe]

Is this a joke?

[discostu]

No he couldn't. I was a big fan of HH as a kid and even then I knew that how things were depicted in a farsicle sit-com had no bearing on reality, for one thing it was obvious that if the German army were really that stupid the war would have been over in a month.

[dfwgator]

I think the films "Stalag 17" and "The Great Escape" had more to do with it. I mean, did anybody really take "Hogan's Heroes" seriously as an example of how the Germans ran the POW camps?

[avg_freeper]

"The Dukes of Hazard" taught me that Dodge Chargers have a max lift coefficient of 15.0 'ish.

[gate2wire]

[1rudeboy]

Hogan's Heroes was a classic comedy, and it cheered up many during some troubled times. Even the Germans loved it . . . so sorry to all those real POWs out there, but no regrets.

[Killborn]

My first reaction, "Who would be that stupid?"

But then again, just looking at DU or the people out in the streets, I can only conclude that maybe it isn't such a bad idea.

Same with renaming Auschwitz.

[Vaquero]

"I KNOW NOTHING"

[Egon]

In related news:

- The lives of lawyers in the real JAG corps aren't generally hair-raising

- Real cats don't talk

- Horses cannot run for hundreds of miles, 24 hours a day

- Real American women don't generally have a pool boy, let alone have sex with him on the deck.

[EnigmaticAnomaly]

"(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."

Only weak-minded fools would believe such dribble...

Nothing to see here, move along...

[American in Singapore]

Kill this thread now.

Klink, Berkhalder (sp), and Schultz were all played by Jews. And it was very difficult and heart-wrenching for them to play those parts.

I have spent alot of time researching this.

Give these brave, noble men some honor. Please stop this thread now.

[Vaquero]

"HOGAAAAAN!"

[Lockbar]

Bob Crain got alot out of the show. Gave him the opportunity to "pick-up" women all over the place, make home made porn, and get his brains bashed in.

[mtbopfuyn]

What part of FICTION do folks not seem to understand?

[BelegStrongbow]

He just gets to it, oh I don't know, say 40 years too late?

I can't see HH driving much opinion or public attitude, given it had little such effect when it was famously running on CBS (I know I never missed an episode). I do remember TV Guide actually running cautionary articles just before the series premiered, raising exactly the point this article does.

But when the series came out, and it was clearly meant as social satire masked as a war comedy, all that went by the board. And nobody took it seriously, everyone kicked back and laughed their tucheses off.

[CFC__VRWC]

Oh please. In the TV show, Hogan and his men had a fully equipped war room under their barracks, complete with state of the art (for the time) radios and other electronics. They had nicely finished escape tunnels that could take them to any point in Germany, that would have taken hundreds of man-years to construct. And that's just scratching the surface.

I don't take anything away from ther men who spent time in the German POW camps, but Hogan's Heroes was so far removed from reality that you would have to be pretty stupid to believe this was how life really was for them, and to say that the show does POWs a disservice is just insulting. It's like saying that science is harmed when the Professor on Gilligan's Island builds a nuclear reactor out of the guts of the transistor radio and couple of coconut shells.

[Brad from Tennessee]

I don't know about Hogan's Heroes but one TV series purporting to be about Vietnam--China Beach--was a total farce. It depicted beautiful nurses and soldiers living in plush barracks in DaNang. It wasn't supposed to be a comedy but it definitely was a farce.

[colorado tanker]

Oh good grief. It was a Hollywood fantasy comedy. Even when Hollywood tries to depict war realistically (which they weren't here) they get a lot wrong. Who would take Hogan's Heroes seriously?. But then, I suppose someone thought the Beverly Hillbillies or Gilligan's Island were realistic. Sheesh.

BTW, we recently bought the DVD set for the first two seasons. It's still really funny.