Anyone who ever saw a WWII movie or an episode of Hogan’s Heroes ought to recognize it. Likewise anyone who’s ever read a book about WWII. It’s a very distinctive iconic design seared into history.
Now whether I’m going to call out some big dude w a big Nazi tattoo while older, smaller me is standing next to him in the gym locker room is another matter. But I’ll be quite sure he’s a Nazi and treat him accordingly going forward.
It isn’t on Schultz or Klink.
(And, despite having seen Hogan’s Heroes many times, before that photo I couldn’t even have told you that Klink typically wore a helmet. I definitely couldn’t have told you what a small emblem on Nazi SS hats looked like and if forced to guess, I would have said a swastika or the lightning bolt SS. I think (possibly because of your military background) you really overestimate how much the average person pays attention to the iconography on military uniforms.)
I’ll be in Portland this weekend. I’ll report back on how the war is going.
Schultz and Klink weren’t SS. They were Luftwaffe.
Major Hochstetter was Gestapo and had a totenkopf on his cap.
You still couldn’t. That’s Schultz.
ETA: Comprehensively ninja’d by @abcdefghij while I was eating my apps.
The death’s head was an SS emblem. Major Hochstetter wore one on his hat.
Klink was Luftwaffe and his hat (not helmet) had a Luftwaffe insignia.
I was fully cognizant of WWII as a kid & teen, a decade before my time in the service. Now WWII was only over 13 years before I was born in 1958, and just 18 years before I sorta started paying attention & remembering the world at age ~5. 9/11 is longer ago now than WWII was when I started school. Almost needless to say, WWII was rather a bigger event than 9/11.
In my kid & teen years it seemed half of entertainment and half of documentaries and half of books were about WWII. I readily admit somebody age 40-something today was not so immersed in their youth as I was in mine. I don’t know your age, but that might be relevant.
And I’m sure that you knew that was on his hat because you knew that was on his hat. But if you had never paid attention to that symbol in photographs before, do you think you would have recognized that the hat had a stylized skull and crossbones on it viewed at broadcast NTSC resolution on a CRT television from normal viewing distance? Or even been trying to discern what was on his hat?
I’m (almost) 53, and I couldn’t tell you specifically what symbols are found on any of the uniforms of any of the participants in any war.
Mid-50s and I watched Hogan’s Heroes and I also, just today, learned about this symbol and what it’s name was. Have watched a lot of WWII movies as well.
I’ve also been on this board for quite awhile but have either never opened a thread that discussed them, or if I did, it never registered with me till today.
You can see it clearly in the main image from this page:
But that’s a high resolution image probably from a publicly photo. Watching it on pre-HD broadcast TV it would have looked more like this:
I think this is an over-reach regarding the amount of attention average people pay to Nazi paraphernalia and regalia. And what kind of an “ought” is that? Is a person who fails to meet it falling seriously short in some important way?
I watched Hogan’s Heros religiously growing up. I never noticed the skull on Major Hochstetter’s hat. I doubt it would have been discernable at 480i resolution anyhow.
I didn’t know about the Totenkauf until the link Mitchell and Webb skit.
It’s not unprecedented for a drunk and/or stupid young man (or woman) to get a tattoo and regret it later.
Nitpick: totenkopf, not totenkauf. It’s the same kopf as in dummkopf. Kauf(en) means something completely different (verb for ‘to purchase/buy’), and completely irrelevant here.
Andrew Cuomo posted to social media and then quickly deleted (but not so quickly that people didn’t capture copies of it) an AI-generated video in which Idris Elba, Sean Astin, and Javier Bardem, and a ‘70s Blaxploitation-style pimp in a purple suit and fur coat appear as petty criminals expressing support for Zohran Mamdani because he’ll legalize shoplifting, crack dealing, and domestic violence.
SMH To think I was nearly fluent thirty years ago. Dr. Gurganus would have had my head had he seen that.
Dummkopf!
I’m much more into the Pacific War than whatever things were happening on that other continent, but I’ve been aware of stuff and seen movies and read books about Nazi Germany. I could have told you that the SS had a skull and bones, but I don’t know if I’d pick it out of a lineup.
But, as others said, the question of judgement is keeping it after you find out.
Anecdotally, I can attest to people getting stupid tattoos that they don’t know what it means. I knew a guy who had a Mongol’s head on his arm. When I asked if he was a Mongol, he said, “No, I just like the way it looks.” I suggested he steer clear of biker bars.
I’m somewhat surprised that, 20 years after the war, the costume designers for Hogan’s Heroes used authentic WWII German/Nazi insignia, rather than taming them down.
Did the costumes or sets ever feature swastikas? ISTM that that would have been tasteless and triggering (before that term was coined) for an awfully large portion of the 1960s TV audience. I was just 10 years old at the time, so I don’t remember.
Yes. The one thing that I’ve always associated with “Nazi uniform” is the red armband.
