Ernst Stavro Blofeld

**Ernst Stavro Blofeld** is an evil genius with aspirations of world domination, he is the archenemy of the British Secret Service agent James Bond and is head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE, the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

## History

### Pre SPECTRE

Ernst Stavro Blofeld was born on 28 May, 1908 to a Polish father Ernst George Blofeld and a Greek mother, Maria Stavro Michelopoulos in Gdynia. Blofeld attended the University of Warsaw where he studied economics and political history. in 1926, he went to the Warsaw Technical Institute to study engineering and radionics. He then took a communication position with the Polish government in 1933, at the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. He began to use his position for insider trading, buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved to Turkey, where he worked for Turkish radio and set up an intelligence organization. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel, he decided to back the Allied war effort; ironically, he was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. After the war, Blofeld temporarily moved to South America before founding SPECTRE in 1954. He set up the headquarters in Paris and while living there, had relations with a French whore who bore him a daughter illegitimately.

Despite his willingness to murder millions to get what he wants, Blofeld has a few professional scruples. In one instance, he learned that during a standard fundraising kidnapping mission of a young girl, the responsible agent had sexual relations with her. Although Blofeld says that the relations may have been "voluntary or involuntary on the girl's part," he had the agent killed as punishment and returned the girl and half the ransom to her father as compensation. His reasons had nothing to do with morality, but rather with the importance of SPECTRE being known for keeping their word to those they did their "business" with. Blofeld ruled by fear mixed with respect from his subordinates. When a SPECTRE agent fell out of line he was publicly made and example of with various methods of death.

### Plan Omega

In June 1959 Blofeld formulates a plot to be carried out by his second-in-command Emilio Largo. At this stage in his life, Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, weighing roughly 20 stone (280 lb; 130 kg), has dark crew-cut hair, black eyes , heavy eyelashes, a thin mouth and long pointed hands and feet. He has violet-scented breath from chewing flavoured cachous (breath mints). Blofeld's lifestyle is described in one chapter in *Thunderball*: "For the rest, he didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much."

Blofeld finishes looking over his cohorts in crime, noting the one member of SPECTRE who evades his glance. He takes a violet-scented breath freshener, as is his custom before saying something disagreeable. Blofeld reviews SPECTRE's crimes of the last few years, including drugs, espionage, and blackmail, netting a healthy profit to the criminal organization. The current undertaking is Plan Omega, a much more profitable venture.

Blofeld moves on to discuss the last undertaking, a kidnapping. He has No. 7, one of the French mafia men, stand. Blofeld recounts how the kidnapped girl was molested during the kidnapping. Perhaps it was consensual, perhaps not, but it violated SPECTRE's promise to return the girl untouched. As a result, Blofeld has returned half of the million-dollar ransom. The standing man, No. 7, knows he is innocent and No. 12 is guilty, but he trusts Blofeld and remains standing. Blofeld then promptly kills No. 12 and acknowledges that he was merely using No. 7 to throw No. 12 off guard.

### Piz Gloria

Blofeld found refuge in Switzerland and attempted to pass as Comte Balthazar de Bleuville. In 1961, he sent to the Royal College of Arms in London to have these facts established in order legally to obtain right to the de Bleuville title supported by an Acte de Notoriete which would in due course receive the stamp of approval of the Ministere de la Justice in Paris. Bond travels to his research facility, Piz Gloria, in disguise as Sir Hillary Bray to try and lure Blofeld out of Swiss territory and into a NATO country to be arrested.

Upon arriving, Bond learns that Blofeld has radically altered his appearance, now taller and thinner; having reduced his weight to 12 stone (170 lb; 76 kg); sporting long silver hair, an infection on his nose, removing his earlobes; and wears dark green tinted contact lenses. His plan is to destroy Britain and Ireland's agricultural economies through biological warfare. Blofeld claimed he would not carry out his plan if all his past crimes are pardoned and he was recognized as the new Count de Bleuville.

With an official action ruled out due to Swiss neutrality, Bond contacts Marc-Ange Draco to arrange a "demolition job" of Piz Gloria. Bond joins Draco and his Union Corse henchmen in a mercenary helicopter assault on the facility. The raid is successful, and Bond and Blofeld are the last to escape before the institute is detonated by Draco's demolition team. After a furious bobsled chase down Piz Gloria, Blofeld ultimately escapes by dropping a grenade which blows the pursuing Bond out of the track.

After the foiling of his pland, Blofeld heads to the Austrian-German border and gets his revenge by murdering Bond's new wife, Tracy causing their car to crash, killing her on impact.

### Death Collector

In January of 1962, Blofeld entered Japan with a Swiss passport under the name of Doctor Guntram Shatterhand. He was accompanied by his wife Frau Emmy Shatterhand, actually Irma Bunt. They had Swiss passports and the doctor described himself as a horticulturalist and botanist specializing in subtropical species. He carried references from the Jardin des Plantes in Paris and Kew Gardens, but these were couched in rather nebulous terms. He quickly got in touch with the equivalent authorities in Japan and with experts in the Ministry of Agriculture.

He proposed to spend no less than one million pounds on establishing an exotic garden or park in Japan which he would fill with a priceless collection of rare plants and shrubs from all over the world. Blofeld would import them at his own expense in a sufficient state of maturity to allow his park to be planted with the minimum of delay. The offer was enthusiastically accepted by the government, who, in return, granted Blofeld a ten-year residency permit.

After travelling round the country in great style, the doctor took a fancy to a semi-ruined castle in Kyushu. The doctor and his wife, moved into the castle with all speed and set about recruiting staff from among the locals, who would look after the establishment and its grounds. These staff were all recruited uniquely from former members of the Black Dragon Society. Blofeld filled the park with poisonous vegetation, the lakes and streams with poisonous fish, and he has infested the place with snakes, scorpions and poisonous spiders. He was not harmed by any, because whenever he left the castle he wore a full suit of Samurai armour. His workers are not harmed because they wear rubber boots up to the knee, and facial masks.

Blofeld, again, altered his appearance, gaining muscle, added a gold-capped tooth, a fully healed nose, and a drooping grey moustache. Bond strangles him to death at the end of the novel.

## Trivia

* Blofeld's birthdate, May 28, 1908, is Ian Fleming's birthdate.
* The name Blofeld was inspired by the father of English cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, with whom Fleming went to school.