None of the characters in Hogans Heroes belong to me (as usual), I´m borrowing them, to write this (and many other) stories, for fun, not profit. This story is a little different from those I wrote before. I intend to mix the reality a bit more with the fun parody we all know so well. This story shall become a sequence of small essays, each presenting the view of a specific character from Hogans Heroes on the war, after the war.

This first piece is written by "Andrew Carter". My other story "As time goes by" will continue as soon as I´ve got the time (and ideas) to continue it, I apologize for the waiting time.

I apologise for any mistakes in spelling, grammar or historical events, most of this was written out of my memory and the story has not been beta-read. What I also want to add is, that I have not been in World War II. When it started, I was minus fourty-nine, that´s a lot of time. I am imagining the feelings and thoughts in this story, combined with what I know, what I think and what people of my age often say or think about this topic.

Now enough of this, let Andrew Carter begin:

I was one of Hogans Heroes


Part I: Andrew Carter

I think this should have been written earlier, honestly, but there was no time, no time and no place in the world for this piece of writing. Who is interested anyway in the thoughts of someone who lived sixty years ago, someone who is yet a human being, albeit in a time so far away. I am the last of Hogans Heroes, yes Hogans Heroes, because without him, neither this piece of writing nor I myself would have existed in this time.

For me, Andrew Carter, this essay will be the last final step towards closing off the chapter of the second world war, a war about which some people wrote that since then, the world has never been the same again.

I believe this is true, never before had cruelty been so specific, had organisation entered into the cruelty of extinction. Extinction, yes, I use this term explicitly, because that was what Adolf Hitler intended, to wipe out the Jews and with them, many others, then deemed unworthy to live.

To you, dear reader, living in the twenty-first century this may seem absurd, the whole idea a dream, no nightmare of a madman, yet for us, it was real, very real at that time. Every event in the past, even if it´s no more than a phrase in your history textbook meant more than that, at that time. You might read Wannsee Konferenz 20.01.1942. For you, it´s just another number, which you will have to learn for your next exam. I won´t and can´t blame you for this, but you should realise, that at this conference was planned the murder of thousands, no millions of innocent people, people with families, people with friends, people living their lives, just like you do.

Do you have to know this? A question, which seems al to legitimate. I asked myself this question time after time, when I was still at school. Now, as an old man, as someone who has witnessed one of history´s darkest hours, I say, yes, you need to know it. Why? So that you recognise the signs, when they are first clearly to be seen.

History can be viewed in many different ways. You can see it as a never ending stream of disaster, one fatal human mistake following another. Remember, that we, who lived before did not know, what you know now. Knowing afterwards is a lot easier, than knowing in advance.

Another way to view history is, as a chain of glorious achievements. I do not like any of these views, I support the mixture, which is also the third way. History is human, errors are also human. Yet invention is also human, so why not combine those two to a more complete view of our world, of our past.

I´m getting philosophical, I know. Some of you may already think of clicking this away, just to not be bothered by it´s contents any more. The critical point is, you should be bothered. Everybody should be bothered by the fact, that human beings like ourselves, most of them, did nothing to prevent the Holocaust, did nothing to prevent the Germans from imprinting their stamp of Nazism on the majority of Europe.

Of course there has been resistance, yet resistance was small. Most people chose the easiest way out. They did not join the Nazi party, so were not guilty of its crimes, but neither did they prevent those crimes and so became guilty of them. They chose to do nothing, but continue their lives.

I think, this is the most likely response. As long as something does not affect you, why risk your life to prevent it? I recently read a war poem, which summarises this feeling nicely. It describes the feelings and thoughts of one person, basically saying, they came for the Jews, I did not do anything because I was not Jewish. They came for the young men, and I did not speak up, because I was not young. This continues, until it reaches the conclusion: and then they came for me, and there was nobody to speak up for me.

This portrays the majority of people nicely, I think. Yet there were some, who put their lives on the line for others, sometimes with not much chance for succes.

Let me call an example. The „Weiße Rose", around Munich. A group of students, all in their early, or mid twenties. They printed articles and essays against the Nazi party, to convince the students that the Nazis were going the wrong way. In the end, they were caught and sentenced to death. What drove these young people, with a whole life ahead of them to do a thing like this?

The reason I think is that they believed in their cause. They believed that they were right and in our view, they were right, yet in their time, they appeared to be not and were sentenced to death for it.

It is interesting to view a case like this, because lots of people claimed that they were too young to understand, too young to realise what was going on. But what is it, that Adolf Hitler´s secretary says in an interview sequeling „Der Untergang"? She says that youth is no excuse, no excuse for not seeing cruelty.

I was one of Hogans Heroes, yes, I was young too. But had I existed at that time, in reality, would I have been as brave as I was at Stalag13?