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In January 1930, Dr. Hugo Eckener of the Graf Zeppelin Company and elected head of the Arctic exploration organisation known as the International Association for Exploring the Arctic by Means of Airships (Aeroarctic) was contacted by the famed Arctic explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins. Wilkins was planning to embark on a submarine expedition known as the Wilkins-Ellsworth Trans-Arctic Submarine Expedition that would see a submarine travel under the ice of the North Pole and then drill its way to the surface.
Dr Eckener had already approached the German government with the idea of a German airship expedition across the Arctic, but although Berlin had shown some interest, the fate of the Italian airship Italia two years previously meant the German government declined to forward any funding for any such attempt.
Wilkins presented to Eckener a plan for a rendezvous and exchange of mail and passengers at the North Pole between the Graf Zeppelin and Wilkins's submarine, the Nautilus which Eckener then took to American newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst who agreed to finance the expedition in return for reporting rights.

Unfortunately for Sir Hubert Wilkins, his submarine had serious mechanical failings and as 1932 progressed it became apparent that Nautilus would never be ready in time. Wilkins was forced to pull out of the venture though his companion Lincoln Ellsworth joined the German airship crew along with the Russian arctic scientist Professor Samoilovich. A Russian icebreaker, the Malygin was commissioned to take the place of the Nautilus for the rendezvous and on the 24th of July 1932, the Graf Zeppelin departed its home base at Friedrichshafen and set course towards the North Pole via Berlin, St Petersburg and Archangel. With a 15 strong scientific crew it flew across the White Sea toward Franz Josef Land and Hooker Island where the meeting and exchange of mail with the icebreaker Malygin took place at the site of the world's northernmost weather station in Tikhaya Bay.
After the ceremonial exchange had taken place, Graf Zeppelin turned east and flew along the 81st parallel until it reached Severnaya Zemlya where cartographical surveys indicated that Severnaya Zemlya was not one island has had been understood, but rather two.
After a brief stay at Severnaya Zemlya Graf Zeppelin returned to Franz Josef Land to carry out one of the main objectives of the flight, the aerial survey and mapping of the island groups. It was there that they reached the northernmost point of the trip, Rudolf Island, roughly 500 miles from the North Pole. Then turning south, Graf Zeppelin flew over the Taimyr Peninsula past Dikson Island and across Novaya Zemlya to complete a first-ever air mapping of the Russian Arctic. Eckener then set a course for Archangel, Leningrad, a brief stop in Berlin and then home.

Although the islands of Franz Josef Land were taken over by the Soviet Union in 1926, many of them are desolated and uninhabited. The year after the Graf Zeppelin expedition, a German ship arrived unnoticed, at Rudolf Island and established a small secret base.
This installation was completed over the course of the winter and by 1934 it was a fully operational, military and scientific installation providing a secret logistical foot hold in the north for the Germans as well as encrypted weather reports.

23rd February 1936. London.
MI6’s Section VIII intercepts a strange radio transmission from the secret German base whose existance has been discovered but whose location is still a mystery. The transmission is heavily encrypted in an unusual unknown code which defies MI6 but two days later Norwegian government officials pass the information to the British Foreign Office that several suspected German agents have recently broken cover to charter passage on a Norwegian ship originally bound for Spitzbergen. At least one of these agents is known to be working for the German Abwehr and two are connected to the German Sicherheitsdienst chief Reinhard Heydrich.

MI6 immediately swings into full gear and just days before the SS Kristianna Maria is due to leave British agents have infiltrated the ships crew. During this operation two of the German agents are overheard discussing their mission and the name ‘Alfred Metzger’ is noted. MI6 learns the Germans intend to sail to the Polar ice pack and travel north to the ice bound Franz Josef Land islands by means of a special insulated ice crawler.

Back in London, this name raises some concern for it was assumed Doctor Alfred Metzger, a scientific genius of ill repute, had been killed in 1935 in the wastelands of northern Sudan.

29th February 1936. Tromsø.
The SS Kristianna Maria leaves Norway and heads north for the polar ice pack. On board are five German agents with numerous Norwegian conspirators and hidden amongst the crew, several British agents. It takes approx ten days to reach the Ice Station by ship and ice crawler.