Werner Klemperer as Colonel Wilhelm Klink, the commandant of the POW camp. Crane was offered the role after appearing as "guy next door" types in television shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show and as a regular in The Donna Reed Show. He uses his wit and ingenuity in missions to counter the Nazis' battle plans. Cast īob Crane as Colonel Robert Hogan, the senior ranking POW officer and the leader of the men in the POW camp. The result is a cold place "where time has stopped". Beyond recreating an extreme or adverse setting, this was to prevent problems with continuity and to allow the episodes to be shown in any order. In Stalag 13 it is always a snowy winter. The camp has 103 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) during the first season, but becomes larger by the end of the series. In the second-season episode "Diamonds in the Rough", at 15:31, a road sign near the camp reads "Somburg" 78 kilometres (48 mi), "Hamilburg" 45 kilometres (28 mi), and "Dusseldorf" 25 kilometres (16 mi) in one direction and "Hafberg" 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) in the other direction.
"The Safecracker Suite") that the nearest major city to the camp is Düsseldorf, which is also fairly far inland and by air is about 157 miles (253 km) from the actual Hammelburg. To complicate matters even further, it is mentioned in several episodes (e.g.
In "Anchors Aweigh, Men of Stalag 13", Colonel Klink specifies that the camp is 60 miles (97 km) from the North Sea three episodes earlier ("Hogan's Hofbrau"), he had stated that the coast was a mere 5 miles (8 km) away. The show is a combination of several writing styles that were popular in the 1960s: the "wartime" show, the "spy" show, and "camp comedy".Īlthough in reality Hammelburg is well inland in Franconia, several first-season episodes place the camp closer to the North Sea (perhaps to make successful escapes to England more plausible). In the second-season episode "Killer Klink", Sergeant Schultz states that the camp is 106.7 kilometres (66.3 mi) away from his home in Heidelberg by direct flight this is well reflective of Heidelberg's direct distance from the actual Hammelburg. Like the historical Stalag XIII-C, it is located just outside of a town called Hammelburg, though its actual location is fictional. The setting is the fictional Luft Stalag 13, a prisoner-of-war camp for captured Allied airmen. This brings the prisoners in contact with many important VIPs, scientists, spies, high-ranking officers, and some of Germany's most sophisticated and secret weapons projects such as the Wunderwaffe and the German nuclear weapons program, of which the prisoners take advantage in their efforts to hinder the German war effort. Klink frequently has many other important visitors and is temporarily put in charge of special prisoners. As a result, the Germans often use the camp for high-level meetings, to hide important persons and develop secret projects. Considering Klink's record, and the fact that the Allies would never bomb a POW camp, Stalag 13 appears to be a very secure location. To the bafflement of his German colleagues who know him as an incompetent sycophant, Klink technically has a perfect operational record as camp commandant as no prisoners have successfully escaped during his tenure Hogan and his men assist in maintaining this record so they can continue with their covert operations. They devise schemes such as having Sergeant Carter visit the camp disguised as Adolf Hitler as a distraction, or rescuing a French Underground agent from Gestapo headquarters in Paris. The prisoners cooperate with resistance groups (collectively called "the Underground"), defectors, spies, counterspies, and disloyal officers to accomplish this. The group secretly uses the camp to conduct Allied espionage and sabotage and to help escaped Allied POWs from other prison camps via a secret network of tunnels that operate under the ineptitude of commandant Colonel Klink and his sergeant-at-arms, Sergeant Schultz. One episode, "Anchors Aweigh, Men of Stalag 13" for instance, mentions the camp being located 60 miles (97 km) from the North Sea. The plot occurs during the permanent winter season in the fictionalized Stalag 13 just outside Hammelburg in Nazi Germany, though details in the show are inconsistent with the real-life camp and city's location in Franconia. Army Air Forces Colonel Robert Hogan and his staff of experts who are prisoners of war (POW) during World War II. Main article: List of Hogan's Heroes episodes