Klink and Schultz are Resistance leaders
It would totally break the mood to connect them with the Valkyrie plot, but Klink is definitely the same sort of officer who was involved with previous anti-Nazi groups. As for Schultz, there are White Rose connections that couldn't be proved.- And apparently "Nimrod" (a super British spy) is in camp and able to slip Hogan plans for a jet fighter. That means it's Klink, Schultz, Hilda/Helga or Burkhalter. Given Burkhalter's position on the general staff and expressed dislike of Hitler and the Gestapo, it's not a long leap to say it's him; but the sheer amount of chaos that Schultz ignores makes it even more probable it's him.
- Well, Hochstetter was there too. See below for my reasoning.
- The Snopes.com Messageboard had a thing where people were writing obituaries of fictional characters, and Klink's was to this effect. It helps that Klink's background lines up pretty well with that of the Valkyrie plotters.
- One episode actually had Hogan aiding to smuggle in the bomb used in the Valkyrie plot; an agent actually died getting it to them. When the German officer who was his contact assured him that they would get rid of the 'fool', Hogan pointedly reminded him that they were the ones who put Hitler in power to start with.
- It's actually a pretty solid fancanon that Nimrod was Klink - there's more than a few hints here and there that he was actually in even deeper than Hogan and his men.
- There is no way Klink could be Nimrod, when you look at the facts. Nimrod spies and sabotages all over Germany while Klink is confined to commandeering the Stalag, and there is no way a colonel in charge of a random POW camp would be able to access the information Nimrod does. Klink can certainly be an Allied sympathiser and/or knowingly help Hogan, but he is no Nimrod.
- This is pretty much said outright in the episode "The Missing Klink" (the source of the fancanon theory about Klink being "Nimrod"); at the end of the episode, Hogan discovers a note from "Nimrod" in which the agent thanks "my dear colonel" for his work in obtaining and transmitting key German aircraft blueprints. The inference is pretty obvious, and as a Luftwaffe officer, Klink would be in a position to get ahold of those plans.
- Simple: multiple agents used the "Nimrod" codename. Likely two or three Nimrods were active in several outposts at any given time. If one died or was compromised/relocated, another stepped in and took his place. There was much turnaround.
Schultz is a deep cover British spy. From World War I.
See above. He ignores a LOT of stuff that Hogan does, including references to tunnels, multiple women, other resistance agents in the barracks, and the off explosion that is clearly the fault of the prisoners."Sometimes I have to be on our side," he says one time when cracking down on Hogan. It's not because he's a loyal German soldier; it's because he's preserving his cover. The times when he is overtly "on the Nazi side" are when Nazis other than Klink are in camp, such as Hochstetter (who's actively looking for spies).
- Plus he's aided and abetted their operations more than once. When Newkirk, Carter, and LeBeau get captured on an operation, Schultz impersonates Klink to help Hogan get them back. The trio had just blown up a train, it wouldn't have been difficult for Schultz to connect the dots.
- Not to mention all the times where Schultz blatantly overlooks clear evidence of the Heroes' activities. In one episode, he goes to their barracks with orders to confiscate a radio. Hogan opens up a chest containing several radios and invites Schultz to pick one, which the good Sergeant (covering his eyes) duly does, and everyone is happy. Pretty ironclad evidence that even if Schultz isn't actively working with Hogan and his men, he knows all about what's going on and is ready, willing and able to very discreetly help them in his own way.
Colonel (and logically later General) Robert Hogan is responsible for the Impossible Mission Force.
He saw how effective a five man band of variously skilled saboteurs and espionage experts was. When the Cold War froze over, Hogan suggested setting up multiple versions of his 'heroes' for the American government and possibly nations allied with us. It's possible that the original team did consist of Newkirk, LeBeau, Carter and Kinchloe.- And those men were in the Air Corps. Imagine what specially-trained commandos could do!
Someday Hogan and Klink will join Schultz in the toy business.
It's been established that Schultz owns a hugely successful toy factory in Bavaria. It's also established that Hogan's a hustler. It's easy to see a scenario where Hogan realizes that it'll be Babies Ever After back home and makes an arrangement to distribute and market Schultz toys in the U.S., probably in exchange for an ownership stake (any pull to direct materials and Marshall Plan money to Schultz would help too...) Klink, meanwhile, would take any work at all in the West over returning to Dresden and life in Soviet-controlled rubble.- Working for the man who played him like a fiddle for three years?
- What, you think Klink is strong-willed enough to turn down a job offer in a postwar economy? He'd jump at it like Schultz going after a strudel.
- They even hinted at this in the show! Once, Klink was talking about what he would do after the war, stating that he might get into office work. Schultz spoke of going back to his toy factory. Klink contemptuously asks "What makes you think the boss will re-hire you?" Schultz smugly states that the boss doesn't have any choice, as Schultz is the boss! Which leads to a chastened Klink offering Schultz his imported cigars with a "Please have a cigar, sir!"
Each season is a reminiscing session with (by then) Lieutenant General/General Hogan and one of the other Heroes.
That's why the series is Out of Order.- Would also explain why they have the same couple of actors playing numerous Germans. Hogan and his crew got rid of so many German officers and agents that they don't even bother remembering what each one looked like.
- And Baker's Remember the New Guy? situation in Season 6 is because that season is when Hogan is meeting with him.
Klink and Schultz know all about Hogan's operation, and are waiting until war's end to enlighten him.
No one can possibly be as stupid and incompetent as Klink and Schultz. Early in the war, they decided that the Allies were sure to win... eventually. When Klink was assigned to Stalag 13, he brought Schultz along; the two collaborated in making life tolerable for the prisoners, in hopes of getting leniency after the war. When Hogan came on the scene, they quickly realized what he was doing, and chose to turn a blind eye. They documented Hogan's activities, though. Once they were sure that the Allies were about to take the camp, they brought Hogan into Klink's office and showed him that they could have stopped him, but didn't.- This makes sense. Klink didn't like the Nazis and would probably have had a better life if not for the war. Schultz lost his job and livelihood as the owner of a toy company to piddle around as a POW camp guard. Neither man had any love of the Nazis or the war, and Schultz certainly knew what Hogan was up to. Klink likely had some idea, but had to keep up appearances with his superiors and at least pretend to be keeping the prisoners in line. He did see Hogan out and about on a few occasions, after all, and never did anything about it.
Klink and Schultz walked free after the war.
Following VE Day and the liberation of Allied POWs, the Heroes testified that the camp commandant and the top guard were humane in their treatment and that their own covert operations couldn't have gone as well under the scrutiny of somebody else. Seeing the evidence, possibly including the colonel's own notes from the guess above or information that they were working for the Allies in some covert fashion, the court-martial agrees, and Klink and Schultz are free to go. Klink and Schultz did not "walk free," and escaped justice only by hiding... comically.
The "Hogan's Heroes" universe runs on the Rule of Funny, and therefore, Klink and Schultz couldn't simply walk free after the war just like that. Like many Nazis, they fled to South America and took on new identities. For Klink and Schultz, this involved temporarily disguising as a married couple (Schultz played the husband while Klink was in drag), and eventually taking some comically embarrassing, low-paying jobs (like circus clowns, or pigeon keepers). At some point, Hogan ran into them again, pretended not to recognize them and offered polite flattery, and walked away with a smirk on his face. Klink knows about Hogan's operations, but doesn't care because Hogan keeps saving him from the Russian front.
As long as neither Hogan nor any of the other prisoners actually attempt to escape, Klink is willing to turn a blind eye to just about anything because Hogan makes sure to bail him out of any trouble that would get him sent to the Russian front. Hogan and his men discovered a temporal portal beneath the camp
Using this, they went back in time to pre-war Germany and built their camp-beneath-the-camp, then returned to their present time and exploited it fully, pulling off the miracles that we saw. Kinch escaped after being declared 4F and Baker was brought in to replace him.
It would explain Baker being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute for Kinch, and the Heroes are mentioned to bring in new men to replace other prisoners that are sent back to England, so nobody appears to escape. Klink somehow ended up having to marry General Burkhalter's sister after the war.
It was apparently in Werner Klemperer's contract that Klink would never win. Based on Klink's "relationship" with her during the series, it is pretty obvious that this would be a definite "lose" from his point of view, and would thus satisfy the "never win" proviso without a suddenly dark outcome, like having him sentenced to life in prison or even the Nuremberg gallows.- He'd probably prefer Spandau Prison to being married to the erstwhile Fraulein Burkhalter and pushing a broom in the Shultz Spielwarenwerk. But the Allies at Nuremberg had bigger fish to fry...
Carter responded to teasing of his Sioux heritage with relative patience because he'd suffered much worse.
He's a card carrying member of the Sioux nation, but definitely does not look it. Odds are he was bullied relentlessly by other tribe members who were more obviously Sioux. No one likes a poser, and other Sioux would have seen Carter as just that. The stolen French gold from episode 18, which was built into the Kommandantur steps, as you'll recall, was recovered by the former prisoners following the decommission and shutdown of Stalag 13 after the war.
Hogan and his men agreed that the money from the recovered bars should go towards war reparations to the surviving widows and children of the men who had given their lives for the cause. By the war's end, the spirits of von Kattenhorn and Feldkamp were locked in an eternal fight with each other, but could no longer remember what the fight was about.
Major Zolle was Uriah Gambitted on the Russian Front.
He mistook a Wehrmacht general for an enemy soldier, and the Wehrmacht lost a crucial battle as a result. Colonel Klink was de-Nazified after the war and became an agent for West German intelligence.
This explains his appearance on the Batman (1966) episode "It's How You Play the Game". Klink's relatively humane treatment of his prisoners (along with his ineptitude as a camp commandant) made him a prime candidate for rehabilitation. And since the Nazis hated those Dirty Commies during the war as much as the Americans hated them after it, it makes sense that he would be assigned to finding a spy in Gotham City during the Cold War.- Robin also tells him to say "hi" to Colonel Hogan. Either Klink has been keeping correspondence with this Worthy Opponent, or he's been collaborating with Hogan, who is now a CIA agent.
Klink is Nimrod, and Schulz was tasked with keeping Nimrod and Papa Bear oblivious to each other's identities.
The Nimrod identity.
The Nimrod has to be one of the recurring characters, because the events of the Nimrod episode took place over the course of 2 days max. Too long for an out-of-area operative to learn about it. Let's look at the characters.- Fans prefer to assume that Klink, Schultz, or even Hilda was Nimrod, mostly because they like them, and the characters were there and clearly have Allied sympathies. But Klink and Schultz are stuck in an unremarkable POW camp, unable to leave for long periods of time often enough, and too low-ranked to reasonably access the information that Nimrod does or generally do anything that Nimrod does. Schultz certainly has Allied sympathies and helps Hogan by seeing nothing and sometimes acts more directly, but that doesn't automatically make him Nimrod. Klink could be pretending to be dumber than he is and be an Accomplice by Inaction to the Heroes, but as said before, cannot actually be Nimrod. Hilda is a female civilian, and while thus able to move around more, she can access even less information than them unless she's a full-on Femme Fatale, and she still needs to be in the Stalag nearly every day. The fans also cite the claim that Klink or Hilda would somehow be able to access sensitive information due to their places as a camp commander and a secretary, which is simply not true. The secret information just won't come within their grasp because they're unimportant.
- One point in favor of Hilda is that when Hogan first picks up the model kits with the genuine plans in them, they're sitting next to Hilda on her desk.
- Nimrod is also unlikely to be one of the Heroes, because they have to be there too, and the others would notice if one of them had something to hide. Besides, it wouldn't make any sense for London to put all their eggs in the same basket or unnecessarily intertwine the operations, when they could spread their resources for more results. Nimrod is known to operate all over Germany, which leaves a few options from amongst the recurring characters. Namely, two.
- It could be Burkhalter. He's in Hitler's inner circle. He's a general. How many generals regularly go to a POW camp during a war? Additionally, he keeps bringing secret plans and weapons to the Stalag or near it, despite knowing that the area is rife with sabotage and other underground activity. He definitely has the power to act unquestioned and the access to information, and either cares enough or hates Gestapo enough to stop them from killing Klink. But he has been shown looting art, and is too high-profile to go around unnoticed.
- In the episode "Will the Real Adolf Please Stand Up?", Burkhalter arrives at Stalag 13 while Carter is impersonating Hitler— only leaving when Carter starts blustering about "incompetent generals" to sway Burkhalter into running away before getting close enough to identify "Hitler" as fake. However, no later episode brings this up— one would think that Burkhalter would have inquired about this unannounced trip, only to find that it never happened. While Nimrod was written in as a later idea, it does supply something to the idea of Burkhalter being Nimrod. Likewise, he never showed much animosity to the prisoners, and even when bringing up Jesse Owens and the political ramifications of Kinch beating a German officer in a boxing match, does so only pragmatically (he knows that it would royally piss off Hitler and likely others) rather than racially (he doesn't seem to personally care if Kinch wins).
- As for his frequent trips to Stalag 13, he was stated to be the general in charge of all the Luftstalags, so his regular inspections of all of them would make sense.
- That leaves Hochstetter. We know absolutely nothing about him except that he's Gestapo and psychotically angry. He's full of hot air and hounds Papa Bear endlessly, but never fails to have his back turned at the key moment. He could arrest Hogan without proof, but doesn't do it. He could have Klink shot when Burkhalter isn't there to stop him, but doesn't do it. He just keeps threatening. As a Gestapo member, he can access vast amounts of information, is able to threaten men who outrank him, and can move around, but is low-ranked enough to not draw attention when he does. In the Nimrod episode, he acted extremely suspiciously. Out of all recurring characters, he's honestly the most plausible one to be Nimrod.
Hochstetter and Feldkampf are twin brothers
Feldkampf can't be Hochstetter in disguise because he died in his second episode, but they could be identical twins.As to why they have different surnames, they may have been born out of wedlock and given their mother's surname. Either their father showed up later or their mother married somebody else, at which point one twin adopted the man's surname but the other twin refused for whatever reason.
When an actor plays several side characters, the characters are actually the same character in disguise for whatever reason.
Gestapo, Abwehr, Russians, Brits, Americans, Underground. Take your pick. Hochstetter doesn't arrest Hogan without evidence because...
Hochstetter firmly believes that Hogan is Papa Bear, but knows that the other people think he's crazy. Hogan is still alive because Hochstetter wants to be able to prove to his fellow Nazis that he's not delusional, and just having Hogan killed, while the easiest way, would prove nothing. So he keeps hunting for proof and lets Hogan live until he has it, believing that knowing/proving Hogan's guilt will make the torture/execution more satisfying and look less like an insane man's whim. The "Col. Johan Schmidt" that Klink's paperwork got forwarded to was the Red Skull
As mentioned above, it was in Werner Klemperer's contract that Klink would never win. I'd say that pissing off the likes of the Red Skull would meet that requirement.<<|Wild Mass Guessing|>>
