User Reviews

At the beginning of this episode we learn that the SS is having some war games near the prison camp. The camp is visited by a ruthless SS Colonel named Deutsch. Deutsch has one of these personalities where dark cloud seem to gather wherever he wonders. Nevertheless, the uncaring Colonel is placed in charge of the war games and Hogan now has an idea about helping the war games play out to the Allied advantage.

If only Hogan and his men can get some live ammunition mixed into the fake games ammo then it will cause havoc among the SS troops and even delay or prevent the unit from being deployed. In order to get the live rounds into the games Hogan is going to need a diversion. And it just so happens to be Klink's birthday. Hogan has an idea.

This is an amusing story as the gang will put on a show for the Commandant's birthday. We get in on the song and dance show as the Heroes do their best as a diversion tactic. The story seemed fresh as the show was a new angle on causing problems for the enemy. It's nice to see the writers try new material that enhances the experience for the viewer. In this episode the material made for an entertaining show.

It's a shame that "Praise the Fuhrer and Pass the Ammunition" was the only "Hogan's Heroes" episode Jack Elinson wrote. The long-time television writer and US Army veteran who had served in Italy during World War Two captured both the serious and humorous flavor of the series his first time out with this well-scripted story that employs the effective approach of disguising dramatic intrigue with a comical distraction, namely, a celebration of Colonel Klink's birthday with an operation to sabotage a German war games exercise to deadly effect.

Elinson starts his story with a figurative, if not literal, bang. Visiting Stalag 13, SS Colonel Deutsch informs Klink that his Waffen-SS regiment will be conducting war games exercises nearby. Played by celebrated television heavy Frank Marth, Deutsch displays all the coldness, ruthlessness and arrogance of Nazi Germany's elite fighting men. Spotting the prisoners of war on parade, he tosses a trademark "potato masher" grenade toward them. Everyone hits the deck expecting the explosion except for Colonel Hogan, the ranking POW who also leads the covert intelligence and sabotage unit operating from Stalag 13, who picks up the dummy grenade, to be used during the war games, before his barbed exchange with Deutsch. The dummy grenade also inspires Hogan's plan to return the favor.

Hogan's plan? Substitute some of the dummy ordnance with live ammunition purloined from the camp's arsenal. Great idea--but how to execute it? When Sergeant Schultz drops by, looking for a black-market gift for Klink's birthday, it inspires Hogan to host a gala variety show for Klink while engineering the removal of a competent guard overseeing the arsenal's security, to be replaced by the reliably incompetent Schultz.

Already Elinson demonstrates that he understands the mechanics of a typical "Hogan's Heroes" caper, and the first half of "Praise the Fuhrer and Pass the Ammunition" contains a lively blend of comedy and credibility up to the variety show. Here the narrative drags, with an unsmiling Deutsch sitting grimly and restlessly next to delighted-fool Klink while Robert Clary's Corporal LeBeau delivers a vaudeville-tinged rendition of "Alouette" and Richard Dawson's Corporal Newkirk trots out his "Maltese Falcon" impersonations as the entertainment must be drawn out to cover the ammunition switch.

Nevertheless, Elinson delivers a promising debut complete with a sly, droll touch: Clary singing a jaunty song about the dismembering of a bird to Germans who might be unwittingly blown apart by live ammo. After his impressive Master Race introduction, which displays the Germans as the formidable foes they were, Marth recedes into the narrative, a disappointment, while Werner Klemperer has to don his fatuous-Klink persona, although John Banner plays his comic stooge to perfection. Praise to Elinson, who passes his audition. Too bad he never returned for an encore.