Werner Klemperer

Werner Klemperer plays Col. Wilhelm Klink on Hogan’s Heroes, the 1960s sitcom that let Allied POWs run rings around bumbling Luftwaffe officers from inside Stalag 13. WWII as high-wire farce. Bob Crane’s Hogan, Klemperer’s Klink, John Banner’s Schultz — a controversial camp premise turned into clockwork syndication. Suspension of historical disbelief required. Klemperer is the commandant as comic weather: vanity, panic, a monocle the prisoners could schedule around.

Hogan's Heroes has been a CBS 1960s hour (1965–1971). Allied POWs run rings around bumbling Luftwaffe officers from inside Stalag 13, turning a WWII camp into a sitcom underground railroad. Werner Klemperer works that brief as Col. Wilhelm Klink, filed here as 1960s sitcom craft: the commandant who made the joke a seating chart. He is how the cameras keep the room from becoming a logo. 1965–1971 on CBS is long enough to prove Klemperer was not a drop-in.

The Informer is the high-wire contract: Allied POWs running rings around Luftwaffe bumblers, WWII as sitcom architecture from inside the wire — that is s01e01, the door. s03e01 keeps the hour fluent: The Crittendon Plan opens season three as allied-bungling comedy: Crane's Hogan still the tailor of the camp. Later, s01e03: Kommandant of the Year — Klemperer's Klink as vanity farce, Banner's Schultz already the look-the-other-way engine. Codes as a map. Plant Klemperer as Col. Wilhelm Klink there and the turn still shows.

The farce is the brief; he is why it ticks. On TV Flash Klemperer is 1960s ensemble steel: not a cartoon sticker, a performance that made the camp a sitcom workplace. Watch the tunnels. Klink is the reason the high-wire still has a fool in charge.