Dear Friends,
It seems to me, that most loved of all characters on Hogan’s Heroes, Hans Schultz, is so beloved because he is an archetype. Schultz is the archetype of the regular German in the 1930s, who only wanted to go on with his life and not be bothered by politics. They saw nothing, they heard nothing and they said nothing. Their inaction led them to be ruled by lunatics, where their former life was heaven, compared to what they had visited upon themselves. Moreover, they detested what their country had become… all because they saw nothing, heard nothing, and said nothing. Every character on that show was an archetype. They speak to us on a deeper level than the surface comedy. What is disturbing about the comedy, however, is that it is a cautionary tale of how much we stand to lose by our own inaction.
Most people in Germany, prior to the rise of the Nazis couldn’t care less about them or their arch rivals, the Bolsheviks. In Hogan’s Heroes, Schultz ran the Schotzie toy company before the war and it was taken away from him by the government, so he had to reenlist as a sergeant to feed his family. He had simply gone about his life making toys for children… until his nation went crazy as a bedbug. Books were being burned, racial hatred was being stirred up, the Nazis were rioting and smashing anything they detested, fear became pervasive and Nazis rose above the law, while the rest of the Germans and especially other races fell below it’s protections. Nevertheless, the Schultzes kept their mouths shut. Hoping it would all go away. Germany lost around 8 million in the war that followed.
That is what makes Schultz an archetype, he illustrates a truth that can only be understood in the narrative format. Archetypes are the distilling of a whole group of people onto a single person. I could go on for hundreds of pages of exposition, on how remaining silent in the face of evil, abets that evil, but it would have nothing on the emotional power of a Sergeant Schultz. He shows us who we are. He is a mirror into our soul. We who see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing. We are as much Schultz as the normal German in 1936. Major Hawksteader is another archetype used in that show. He is the quintessential Geheime Staatzpolizei, GESTAPO. He is a psychopath with anger as his only emotion… and everyone is terrified of him, even Generals.
Hawksteader and all the SS men on that show embodied the oppressor. Terrifying everyone else by their presence, as we today are afraid of the progressive’s Gestapo, Antifa and BLM. Observe the SS and Gestapo in Hogan’s Heroes and you will see, not only do they wear the same color as Antifa and BLM, Black, they practice the same tactics… because they have the same philosophy, subjectivism, groupism and atheism. Both the Nazis and today’s progressives control us with fear. Speak up, even saying the most commonsense thing, and they will destroy you, as they did to a school principle in Vermont. Even pollsters today claim you cannot get a reliable poll, because people are afraid to tell a pollster what they really believe, thinking it is not anonymous… fearing retribution for their opinion.
We laugh at the buffoon Schultz. He is such an idiot. He sees a tunnel plain as day and doesn’t report it, he abets Hogan and Lebeau’s trip to Paris and he poses as a general… all to remain neutral. We laugh at him, not with him, even though he is us, we are him. How many of us see the tunnel right in front of our eyes, and participate in our own ruination, pretending it’s neutrality, as we exclaim, “I see nothing! I hear Nothing! I say NOTHING!” Schultz ended up in a prisoner of war camp as a guard, away from his family and in perpetual fear… others died on the front lines, by strategic bombing and in the structure fires afterward, they were not as lucky as Schultz, but carried just as much blame. Watch a few episodes and see for yourself if they don’t show us our sad destiny… in a comedic narrative format.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
