Ian Fleming’s Great Blofeld Saga

The criminal organization SPECTRE and the character of Blofeld originate from three of Ian Fleming’s novels, known as the Blofeld Trilogy: “Thunderball” (1961), “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” (1963), and “You Only Live Twice” (1964). In Fleming’s earlier Bond novels, the double-0 agent had battled SMERSH, a ruthless Soviet counterintelligence agency. However, the realpolitik thaw between East and West required a shift.

Following Stalin’s death in 1953, his successor Nikita Khrushchev pursued a foreign policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist West. SMERSH, as a radically anti-Western antagonist, had outlived its relevance. A new foe was needed. Fleming (and his co-authors) created SPECTRE, a purely profit-driven criminal organization. Its name is a programmatic acronym: Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. 

But coexistence wasn’t entirely peaceful. In October 1962, American U2 reconnaissance planes discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. During this time, Fleming sat at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica – 78 nautical miles from Cuba – typing “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” on his golden typewriter. The bipolar political system demanded every nation declare its allegiance: Us or Them? For Switzerland, this posed a problem. Its neutrality was often viewed by foreign observers – and by Fleming himself – as thinly veiled opportunism motivated by financial interests. “You know the Swiss, sir. God knows what kind of retainer these lawyers have from Blofeld. But it’s bound to be millionaire size,” Bond explains to his boss M in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

Even Switzerland’s intelligence agency couldn’t assist MI6, bound by national laws and banking secrecy. “Wir bitten höflich um Entschuldigung,” Bond mockingly imitates the Swiss. Blofeld could therefore feel safe in Switzerland, a paradise for spies and criminals, from where he could calmly threaten the free world with annihilation via the virus Omega.