I remember commenting on how dumb the German's were, and he stopped me
and told me that they were really good soldiers, fierce fighters.

Irony department: most of the actors who played the Germans were Jewish. The actor who played Klink, Werner Klemperer, insisted that he play the part as a buffoon. There is a line in "The Password Is Courage", words to the effect "they don't put the brainy ones in charge of POW camps" More trivia. The actor who played the French soldier, Robert Clary, was a concentration camp survivor. Clary was the last of the original cast to pass, in 2022. One of the eps was taken from a personal experience of Leon Askin, who played General Burkhalter, while he was in a French internment camp for "enemy civilians" in 1940.

Being an old phart, I watched HH when it was new, in the mid 60s. I still watch it. Two eps every weeknight on MeTV.

Yes, it's a sitcom. But there is a sinister undercurrent, the fear and repression of the Nazi regime, the fact that people were dying all around them, every day.

My dad was a WWII vet too. The Germans were running out of motivation late in the war. He told of a time his unit, 155 howitzer battery, set up camp at the bottom of a hill. There was a Waffen SS unit on the top of the hill. The next morning, the SS troops came down the hill and surrendered.

wrt "Rat Patrol", ever hear of the SAS, "Special Air Service"? Elite British commando unit. They started, in North Africa, during the war, using machine gun armed Jeeps. There is a pretty good book about the wartime years of the SAS:

The Phantom Major - Africa 1942: the Story of Major Stirling and the Desert Raiders

amazon.com - Phantom Major Africa Stirling Raiders

Here's a trailer for "The Password Is Courage". I enjoy it. Have it in my personal collection, along with "The Great Escape".

YouTube: The Password is Courage Trailer (Callaforification)

Steve