Karl Stromberg

Karl Sigmund Stromberg is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me. Stromberg was portrayed by Curd Jürgens. The character Stromberg was created specifically for the film by writer Christopher Wood. Ian Fleming's novel The Spy Who Loved Me was not told from Bond's perspective, but, rather, a Bond girl who is in love with him. The entire plot of the film has actually nothing to do at all with the plot of the novel. This was at Fleming's request; when he sold the rights to his novel to Eon Productions he requested only the title be used. Biography The webbed-fingered Karl Stromberg is a successful self-employed businessman as head of his own shipping firm and chain of laboratories. Stromberg's obsession and passion is the ocean where he lives in his palace, named Atlantis, that could submerge itself underwater so as not to be seen or detected. Located off the coast of Sardinia, Italy, Atlantis has everything to support life above and below water for any length of time. In fact, Atlantis is more like a city, able to support dozens if not hundreds of people. Stromberg also owns a huge tanker, named Liparus, that serves as his headquarters away from Atlantis. Aboard the tanker he has a small army of red soldiers. In Christopher Wood's novelisation of the film, Stromberg is Swedish and his first name is "Sigmund". Scheme Although Stromberg has a passion for the ocean and its various species, he despises the human race, not unlike Jules Verne's Captain Nemo. Stromberg, however, is much more diabolical and has no interest in benefiting the world. He has a congenital condition in which his hands are webbed like those of aquatic birds or mammals. It is his personal mission to start over with a new civilisation underwater via complete anarchy against the "surface world". After contracting two scientists to create the technology to track nuclear submarines, Stromberg uses this technology to capture a Soviet nuclear submarine and a British submarine. By tracking the subs, Stromberg's specially adapted tanker, Liparus, sneaks up on the subs, forces them to the surface through methods using some kind of high frequencies to disrupt the sub's electrical system and captures them inside the tanker. His plan calls for the firing of nuclear missiles from these subs at Moscow and New York City, thus framing each other's government and starting a nuclear war, which would wipe out every last human being on Earth.