To be fair, "Kommandant Schultz" starts with a typically plausible, real-world (as opposed to the Fascist Funhouse Third Reich of the farcical "Hogan's Heroes") premise you would expect from a Laurence Marks script: Underground agent "Hercules" (Eric Morris) enters Stalag 13 with a brick of zinc oxide, which contains uranium necessary in the construction of atomic bombs, and the knowledge of 22 locations containing zinc oxide deposits that he needs to get to London.
That's right up the alley of the Heroes, the intelligence and sabotage unit under Colonel Hogan operating covertly from the prisoner-of-war camp, although weather delays will prevent the dispatching of an airplane to fetch him for a couple of days, a typically plausible complication, meaning Hercules will need to sit tight until his ride can arrive.
Then General Burkhalter arrives with orders that require the senior non-commissioned officer at every military establishment on the home front, including the Luft-Stalags under Burkhalter's aegis, to assume temporary command in a training exercise authorized by Adolf Hitler. That means, to camp commandant Colonel Klink's chagrin, that Sergeant of the Guard Schultz is to command Stalag 13, with Klink strictly in an advisory capacity.
Unwittingly, Hogan gives the corpulent commandant-to-be a pep talk that fires up Schultz to become a martinet, doubling patrols outside the compound with orders to shoot to kill, thus jeopardizing Hercules from moving out through the escape tunnels. And when, in a workaround, the Heroes arrange to smuggle Hercules out in dog-keeper Schnitzer's (Walter Janovitz) truck, Schultz intercepts the truck, thwarting that attempt. What are the Heroes to do?
What else? Enlist Klink, whom Hogan has persuaded to believe that Hitler's "temporary command" exercise may in fact be a disguise for Hitler's intention to ship German officers to the Russian Front, alarming Klink enough to join a plan to have prisoners escape while under Schultz's command, thus rattling Schultz and enabling Klink to restore himself as commandant.
(REAL-WAR TIMELINE NOTE: To convince Klink, Hogan mocks him by saying, "Just outside Stalingrad there's an igloo with your name on it." The Battle of Stalingrad, an ignominious defeat for Nazi Germany, was one of the turning points of World War Two, with the German Wehrmacht in retreat on the Eastern Front from that point forward. This would place this episode in early 1943 at the latest, although late 1942 is more likely.)
What follows is not only a truly anticlimactic resolution but also lackluster time-filling of a very un-Marks-like order. Did Laurence Marks simply run out of inspiration? Or time? Or did another writer actually finish scripting "Kommandant Klink" without receiving credit. The hijinks that follow in the Farcical Fascist Funhouse smack more of a Richard Powell or especially a Phil Sharp than that of Marks.
Whatever the explanation, a premise of marginal promise plummets into mediocrity at the midpoint, making "Kommandant Klink" an uninvolving dud and prompting the famous question from the game show "What's My Line?": "Will the real Laurence Marks please stand up?"
REVIEWER'S NOTE: What makes a review "helpful"? Every reader of course decides that for themselves. For me, a review is helpful if it explains why the reviewer liked or disliked the work or why they thought it was good or not good. Whether I agree with the reviewer's conclusion is irrelevant. "Helpful" reviews tell me how and why the reviewer came to their conclusion, not what that conclusion may be. Differences of opinion are inevitable. I don't need "confirmation bias" for my own conclusions. Do you?
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