Werner Klemperer's father was world-famous orchestra conductor Otto Klemperer. Otto, in the course of his career, was the resident conductor for symphony orchestras in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York and London.
Werner, despite being Jewish, agreed to play the bumbling Nazi POW Camp Commandant Colonel Klink on the condition the none of Colonel Klink's schemes (that mainly concerned war profiteering or self-aggrandizement) would ever be successful.