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I think that it generally accepted that Kurvi-Tasch's Borduria is supposed to be based on the Eastern European Communist states that were established after WW2. It may have had some elements of East Germany but since Borduria is supposed to be in the Balkans then it would have been more like Yugoslavia under Tito or Bulgaria.

It is mentioned in "Picaros" that Kurvi-Tasch supports Tapioca's regime and has loaned him Sponsz in order to re-organised the state police. I don't know if Communist nations like Russia did have much influence in Latin American governments at the time (with the exception of Cuba) so this may have just been Herge's way of getting Tintin to confront an established enemy for the sake of plot.

I've never had the feel that Sponsz is supposed to be a Nazi exile who has somehow established himself in an important position in a foreign government.


There is Ira Levin's "The Boys from Brazil" and, I think, several novels by Robert Ludlum, though I have not read many of his books (only two to be honest :). Herge never specifically states that the men in his comics are Nazi on the run but it is a fair guess that they are. I have read a couple of other Belgian/French comics published in the 1960s in which the villains are Germans getting up to dubious activities in remote parts of the world.

Could you tell me which ones ? I would like to read these too, if English versions are available .

And thank you for informing me about these.

This might be fairly obvious, but Rastapopoulos can be seen in Tintin in America.

Moderator Note: There is an entire thread devoted to discussing whether or not this is Rastapopoulos's debut to be found here.

The Tintinologist Team

"La Ribambelle aux Galopingos" by Jean Roba - click here for details of the series. There was also "Swastika", a Tif et Tondu adventure by Will (pen-name of Willy Maltaite), though it was actually published in the 1980s. I know of a third one but I cannot remember the title since the book belonged to a friend. Sadly, none of these have been published in English.

Peru had at least one government who was friendly to the Eastern Bloc, as far as buying Russian military hardware.

Indeed in "Picaros" the helicopter is a Soviet Mil, & the official car is modelled on a Zil limousine.

Well, firstly, I have an Irish name, and it is "stereotypically" so (it's one of the most common Irish names, possibly the most common), but I am not Irish.
Secondly as I said, we know for a fact that Müller assumes identities; what we definitely don't know is which - if any - of the ones we are presented with, is real.
It's therefore a big assumption to make that Müller is who he says he is, and too big an assumption to be taken at face value...
The examples of German you list are only found in the English, and as noted in the thread discussing his nationality, the French doesn't contain anything by way of a German "accent" to indicate that he anything other than a French speaker, so again, nothing definite there.
It's even possible that it's exactly what someone pretending to be German would do, to corroborate their cover-story.

In addition to the books already mentioned, you could look for Orson Welles's 1946 The Stranger, in which he plays a Nazi living under an assumed name in a small town in Connecticut, while being hunted for his war crimes; it might be one of the earliest examples of the form, and is shocking for it's use of real concentration camp footage (not for exploitative reasons, it's sensitively handled in showing the mission of the Nazi hunters).
The 1956 film version of the story The Most Dangerous Game, which was re-titled Run For the Sun transfers the whole story to post-Second World War, and casts the villain as a Nazi officer, hiding out in the guise of a Dutchman (the irony being that the "Dutch" actor who played him, Peter Van Eyck, was in actuality a German - although the place he was born is now in Poland - who had left when he was twenty, toured around Europe and North Africa, before heading for the States where he wrote music for revues, worked for Irving Berlin and (coincidentally, Orson Welles), before changing his name, taking American citizenship, and joining the U.S. army to fight in the Second World War).
There are also things like 1961 The Twilight Zone episode "Death's-Head Revisited"; a little later, Mission: Impossible had two stories about ex-Nazis being brought to justice in the first series alone.

"Müller" is a stereotypical German name so I think that we can assume that he is a German national.
I rather doubt that while planning the character Hergé intended to have him as an actual Englishman of German descent as could be the case in real life.

Some analysts have suggested that his money forging is part of a German government plot to destabilise the Western economy, but I have always thought that the Black Island gang was just a typical group of crooks and that Müller was a reflection of the fact that it was very international: making bank notes of various currencies and sending them to other countries.

BTW, click here for more on the Müller issue.

Why? We don't know that it's even his real name, and we do know he is a man who uses aliases.

There is evidence that Hergé may have based him on a real-life Briton working for the Germans. We know he later used the name "Smith" - a stereotypically British name.

What if calling him Smith was Hergé's way of clarifying that he wasn't German (and has been pointed out by Harrock n Roll, other than the character's name, there is nothing in his dialogue to mark his out as a German in the French original)?

As I said, I have a stereotypical Irish name, but you would be wrong to assume I am Irish. Had my paternal great-grandparents been reversed in their nationalities, my grandfather, father, and I would have had German surnames, rather than Irish ones, but I wouldn't be German either.

Haddock has a British name (albeit uncommon), but there isn't enough evidence to pin-point his nationality either, so once again, on the evidence here, I'd say we are left in limbo.

The ambiguity is too great to make any guess more likely than another, until further evidence is brought to bear in the proceedings. :-)

To a certain extent I would agree given that my own surname is Swiss but I am English and the son of an Australian :)

However, I also think that if Hergé had intended Müller to be English born and bred then he would have given him a more English sounding name.

When Müller becomes "Smith" he is an agent for a major power which we can assume is an enemy of Tintin's country Belgium. Given that Black Gold was originally published in the 1930s we can assume that that power was Germany.

While operating abroad it is quite usual for secret agents to assume a name and nationality of somewhere other than where they actually come from. Hence Müller from Germany becomes "Smith" from England or any other Anglo-Saxon country. A good example of this is Russian spy Konon Molody who operated in England as a Canadian called Gordon Lonsdale.

Surely you have just torpedoed your own argument beneath the water-line? By that reasoning, "Müller" would almost certainly have to be an assumed identity, misdirecting the locals into thinking he was from Germany... Hergé has given "Smith" (agent of the smuggling ring) the cover story of being a German in Britain, perhaps to cover the comings and goings of his continental gang-mates, and to explain all the packages that come from, and go to, overseas.

However, I'm not out to score easy goals here - I still maintain that there isn't enough evidence in this case to make the assumption that we know anything about Müller/ Smith's true identity or nationality, hence it isn't possible to use him to justify the proposition that Hergé was anti-German (which is where this all started after all).