Rocco D’Ambrosca: 04/21/2004
When Ian Fleming created the character James Bond he also created an entire world that Bond and his enemies lived in. This world is filled with many evils for Bond to face in his many adventures. This world also seems very futuristic and at times even farfetched. However, during the Cold War there were real spies who actually had missions and equipment similar to those in the Bond world. There are many parallels between the James Bond world and the real world including characters, weapons/gadgets, and the Soviet organization SMERSH.
During the Cold War spies were everywhere. The character of James Bond is described as a classy, debonair, British man. He is portrayed as something that men want to be and a man with whom women are interested in. His job is seen as something fun and wonderful with plenty of thrills and excitement. In reality the job of a spy is more boring, less exciting, and far less glamorous. Real spies were constantly worried about being discovered and in turn captured or killed. Their job is focused on obtaining intelligence through surveillance and not running and gunning like James Bond. Real spies try and pretend not to exist; not live in glory and luxury (Melton 8).
The two main villains in From Russia with Love are General Grubozaboyschikov and Donald “Red” Grant. The leader and chief of SMERSH in the book is General G. He was also the chief of SMERSH during the Cold War. The General is the one who wanted Bond dead and devised the plan to have him assassinated. The assassin for the job was Donald “Red” Grant. In the book Grant is a psychopathic assassin hired to kill Bond. During the time of the Cold War SMERSH sent out several assassins like Grant to kill spies (Dougall 30-31).
During the time of the Cold War there were several intelligence and counterintelligence agencies on both sides. There was MI6, CIA, FBI, NSA, and KGB. MI6 is a British agency that actually exists in real life and is where James Bond worked in the book. The CIA, FBI, and NSA are all American based agencies and all of which had spies and agents working during the Cold War. The KGB was a soviet agency and was the main source of soviet spies. During the Cold War, Berlin was the forefront of espionage operations. After WWII, Germany was split into 4 zones: French, British, American, and Soviet. The Soviet sector of East Germany became an international center of intelligence. One major project during the Cold War was a joint operation between the CIA and MI6. This project was the digging of a tunnel under the Berlin Wall to intercept a cable that was carrying Soviet military communications from Berlin to Moscow. The Berlin Wall was a 96 mile concrete wall with watchtowers and minefields which separated East and West Berlin. There were several intelligence and counterintelligence agencies during the Cold War and many are still in operation today including MI6 the agency that Bond worked for (Melton 42-45).
The two weapons that James Bond uses in From Russia with Love are a pistol and a sniper rifle. His pistol is described as a small black sidearm that was held in a holster under his left arm (Dougall 11). A pistol that is similar to Bond’s pistol is the Walther PPK. The Walther PPK pistol was designed for German plain-clothes police and is an easy weapon to hide making it popular with many intelligence agencies worldwide (Melton 167). The sniper rifle that Bond uses was called an AR-7 rifle in the book. The rifle was described as a hollow stock that held the rifle’s barrel and infrared telescopic sight (Dougall 33). A rifle similar to the rifle Bond uses in the book is the Winchester Model 74 .22 caliber rifle. American Winchester 74 sporting rifles were purchased for the British Home Guard Authority Units and were modified by the addition of British-made accessories including a Parke Hale silencer and an Enfield telescopic sight (Melton 170-171). The Walther PPK pistol and Winchester 74 rifle are almost the exact weapons that Bond used in the book showing how Ian Fleming wanted to keep the weapons in his novel realistic to the weapons of the time.
During the Cold War there were many gadgets used by spies, the following are some of those gadgets. There was a necktie camera developed and used by the KGB that took photos through a fake tiepin. The camera was operated by a remote shutter release concealed in the pocket (Melton 43). The KGB also had weapon type gadgets including a gas pen and lipstick pistol. The KGB gas pen was a pen that held cyanide gas which was released when the pen was clicked. The pen was capable of causing almost instant death (Melton 43). The KGB lipstick pistol was a lipstick tube that was a 4.5mm single-shot firing device (Melton 45). There were also several gadgets used for concealing film and other forms of intelligence. There was a Battery film container which was a real battery that could power things but could also hide film. If the battery container was not opened properly the film would be destroyed by acid (Melton 49). Cans of Talcum powder were used to hide film and other intelligence that had been gathered by a spy (Melton 51). Leather inner soles were built into a spies shoe and were used to hold a switch blade or gold coins (Melton 159. In the book Bond has a briefcase that held several gadgets and tricks. There were ammo tubes of .25mm caliber ammo for his AR-7 rifle which were hidden in the screws of his briefcase. There were also plastic strips of 25 gold sovereign coins hidden in the inner paneling of his case. A flat throwing knife was hidden in the side of the case and could pop out for easy access. Finally, there was a teargas bomb concealed in a can of Talcum powder that was triggered by the briefcase’s latches (Dougall 32-33). This one briefcase that Bond had on his mission, his little box of tricks, held many things in secrete ways just like all of the gadgets that were actually used during the Cold War.
There were many cipher devices that were used before and during the Cold War including the Kyha, M-94, Bolton, Heberen, Converter M-209, Enigma, and the UB-8. Cipher devices are used to encode a message so that only the person who is supposed to get it will be able to read it once they decode it. Ciphers basically replace letters or numbers with other letters or numbers in a type of code. The two major ciphering devices that were used in WWII and into the Cold War were the Converter M-209 and the Enigma machine. The Converter M-209 was designed by Boris Hagelin and was widely used by the US Army during WWII. The machine was compact and portable, using a series of rotors to encipher and decipher secret military messages. After a message was enciphered through the Converter M-209 it was printed onto paper tape in five-letter groups. The message was then transmitted by radio and deciphered on another machine. The Enigma machine was used by the Nazis during WWII and was a major success for them causing many problems for the Allies. The cracking of the Enigma code in 1943 is attributed as a factor in the Allies winning of the war. The Enigma machine had been invented in 1923 and was a mechanized electric device for enciphering and deciphering messages. Each letter was enciphered separately through a series of plug connectors and rotors. The Lektor was a Russian decoder that Bond tries to get while on his mission. The Lektor is in many ways similar to all of the other cipher devices of the Cold War era (Melton 144-147).
During the Cold War there was a Soviet counterintelligence agency know as SMERSH. “SMERSH is a contraction of ‘Smiert Spionam’, which means ‘Death to Spies’” (Fleming 28). This phrase is said to have been made up by Joseph Stalin. SMERSH was created after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 as a division of Soviet intelligence and has been responsible for seeking out and blackmailing, kidnapping, or killing anyone who opposed the Communist regime. SMERSH was and is really the ninth division of the KGB and is dedicated to terror and diversion. SMERSH is led and staffed by the most fanatical Communist killers and still exists today (Melton 124-125).
In the James Bond world SMERSH is the ultimate villain. SMERSH was a soviet organization of great power and destruction. SMERSH was very well feared and had never failed until it came up against Bond. In From Russia with Love, SMERSH tries to carry out its most challenging mission to assassinate James Bond. The chief of SMERSH is General Grubozaboyschikov and is the one who calls for the assassination of Bond. Rosa Klebb head of department II, Operations and executions – the most feared section of SMERSH, is assigned by the General to execute his order for the assassination of Bond. Klebb recruits a young beautiful Russian girl by the name of Tatiana Romanova to lure Bond into a trap. Donald “Red” Grant is assigned by Klebb to kill Bond once Tatiana has lured him in. Of course this plan fails, Tatiana falls in love with Bond and Grant ends up dead (Dougall 29-30).
There are many similarities between SMERSH in the Bond world and in the real world. First off, SMERSH is a real agency in the KGB that is meant to kill and assassinate people. General Grubozaboyschikov is really the chief of SMERSH and did order the assassination of many spies like Bond. There was also a department II of SMERSH for operations and executions as well as departments I, III, IV, and V. Ian Fleming just didn’t come up with SMERSH, it was a real Soviet counterintelligence agency that was very active during the Cold War.
In conclusion, there are many parallels between the James Bond world and the real world including characters, weapons/gadgets, and the Soviet organization SMERSH. The Cold War was a time of tension. Through this time of stress and tension spies were out on the frontlines gathering information to prevent this tension from escalating. During the Cold War, spies were using all kinds of equipment to help them in the field. All of the missions they went on and equipment they used during the Cold War is all similar to that of the Bond world. The real world and the Bond world have many parallels which shows to a great degree the amount of time and effort Ian Fleming put into his novels to make them as realistic and as close to the real world as possible.
Works Cited:
Dougall, Alastair. James Bond: The Secret World of 007. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.
Fleming, Ian. From Russia with Love. New York: Penguin, 2003.
Melton, H. Keith. Ultimate Spy. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2002.
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