Hogan’s Heroes

Back in the 1960s crooner Bing Crosby headed a film and TV show development company.  One of his TV series pitches involved Prisoners Of War in a Nazi POW camp.

Sounds reasonable-right?  After all the end of World War II ended barely 20 years previously and citizens and veterans who were alive during the war years still remembered the Nazi’s atrocities.

What better way to depict the horrors of war than with a TV series about the war? War TV series were popular at the time with series such as Combat and Twelve O-Clock High.

The only problem is, the TV series was a comedy set in a POW camp!

The immediate out roar over the series was deafening and even before the show aired it almost got canceled.

Fortunately the show never played down the war; it simply shied away from the atrocities since the story was in a POW camp-not a concentration camp.

Hogan’s Heroes went on to become a popular TV series.  Most WWII veterans liked it.

CBS/Paramount’s ‘The Complete Hogan’s Heroes Kommandant's Kollection’ contains all six seasons of the comedy series starring Bob Crane as Colonel Robert Hogan, the commander of an undercover, covert team of Allied spies stationed at a POW camp who thwarted the Nazis on every turn.

Commandeered by the incompetent Colonel Klink who was assisted by the bumbling Sergeant Schultz, unwittingly housed the spies in his camp that he boasted as never having been escaped from.

Hogan’s Heroes was one of my favorite comedy TV series.  I especially liked Sergeant Schultz whose catchphrases ‘I know nothing.’ and ‘Colonel Hogan!” never failed to bring a smile to my face.

The 27-disc collection contains all the TV series episodes and some very special extras including the original pilot, interviews, behind-the-scenes shenanigans, a MAD parody, several featurettes, home movies, bloopers, commercials, commentaries and so much more.


It’s the comedy that went to war…and won!