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Literary Tag


Count Konrad von Glöda is the alias assumed by former SS officer Aarne Tudeer. After World War II, he began to plot the return of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and ensuing world domination with the National Socialist Action Army. He serves as the main antagonist in the 1983 James Bond novel Icebreaker by John Gardner.

Biography[]

Early Life[]

Aarne Tudeer was born in Finland anywhere between the early 1910s and 1930s, and in adulthood became a high-ranking officer in the Finnish Army under Marshall Carl Mannerheim. In 1943, when the Finnish Army sided with the German army against the Russians during World War II, Tudeer accepted a position within the Schutzstaffel. By the end of 1943, Tudeer had been promoted to SS-Oberfuhrer and relocated to Hitler's Germany. After the end of the war, Tudeer and a number of other National Socialist officers and soldiers relocated to Argentina and then to a compound in Paraguay. However he quickly grew frustrated with the lack of drive in his contemporaries, and began gathering followers for his new National Socialist Action Army, a terrorist organization that would be quickly dismissed before followers infiltrated governments and re-emerged as a political party to vindicate Adolf Hitler's vision and create a worldwide European "Master Race." He procured funds from aging National Socialists and used the name of "Von Glöda," a defunct noble family distantly related to the Tudeers to re-emerge in the late 1960s. In the late 1970s, Von Glöda swindled soldiers at the Soviet arms depot Blue Hare into arming his followers, and was allowed to use an abandoned military bunker as a base of operations if he could provide the government with their old enemy James Bond.

Icebreaker (1983)[]

In the early 1980s, at a military complex outside of Tripoli, Libya, all but six members of a Soviet-Libyan delegation were killed by assassination squads belonging to the neo-fascist NSAA using Soviet weaponry. This event was later known as the Tripoli Incident. A month later, five members of the British Communist Party along with Soviet members on a goodwill mission to London were killed by them as well. Within a year, no fewer than thirty assassinations ordered by the NSAA were reported worldwide.

Having arrived from his exercise near the Arctic Circle, M assigns James Bond on a covert operation codenamed Operation Icebreaker where he is aligned with Brad Tirpitz of the CIA, Koyla Mosolov of the KGB, and Rivke Ingber of the Mossad. Together, they are to investigate the theft and future destination of arms stolen by the NSAA headed by Count Konrad von Glöda from Russian bases. Beforehand, a background check conduct by Bill Tanner reveals Glöda's real name is Aarne Tudeer who served as a high-ranking officer in the Finnish Army under Marshall Carl Mannerheim. In 1943, when the Finnish Army sided with the German army against the Russians during World War II, Tudeer accepted a position within the Schutzstaffel. By the end of 1943, Tudeer had been promoted to SS-Oberfuhrer and relocated to Nazi Germany. After the end of World War II, Tudeer disappeared with indications of still being alive and still wanted for war crimes. In the 1950s, he was confirmed to have been spotted in South America, and returned to Europe during the 1960s having undergone a successful identity transplant.

When a photograph sent by M reveals that Rivke Ingber is actually Anni Tudeer (an associate of Paula Vacker), Bond learns from Ingber that her father married a widowed half-Lapp woman before leaving to Paraguay following the collapse of the Third Reich. In Paraguay, her father’s unstable behavior causes her mother and her to flee to Stockholm, Sweden using Swedish pasports and then to Helsinki using Finnish passports where she divorced Tudeer, and reclaimed her land.

Following Ingber's accident and disappearance at a land mine explosion, Koyla shows Bond and Tirpitz a map locating Von Glöda's “Ice Palace” within the USSR's borders. All three race there on snow carts when Bond enters Glöda’s lair decorated with National Socialist memorabilia. When Bond meets Glöda, the self-appointed Führer explains his mission to overthrow the eastern European Communist bloc in order to establish a Fourth Reich. He also reveals to Bond that he collaborated with Koyla that in exchange for his service to him, he would give Bond over to him to Department V (formerly known as SMERSH). Lastly, Glöda desires to know if London intelligence has custody of a NSAA member, which Bond repeatedly denies knowledge of this. He then subjects Bond to an unsuccessful water torture procedure.

Following their escape, Koyla tells Vacker and Bond that the Soviet Union had launched airstrikes against the Ice Palace, in which the two race back to witness. However, von Glöda survives, and re-encounters Bond at the Vantaa airport where he attempts to escape Finland. Both Bond and Glöda exchange gunfire with the latter dying in the process.

Trivia[]

  • Glöda means "glow" in Swedish.
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