User blog comment:KennyChief/S.H.I.E.L.D. is a UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT organization, not International./@comment-6127681-20151013043349/@comment-6127681-20151013234757

But that shows that most people in HYDRA WERE Nazis. What they talked about proves that in their minds, they believed in the Nazi cause. They HAD to be Nazis; the SS was literally the armed branch of the Nazi Party. You'd have to join the SS before you joined HYDRA, and if thousands of Germans were joining the SS just to abandon the Nazi cause, of COURSE the Nazis would know about it. SS men were chosen based on their ability to follow instructions from the Nazi elite, not whether or not they liked the "treasonous" philosophy of one Obergruppenführer. Men who joined the SS were indoctrinated into believing in the Nazi cause and fight for it to the death. This essentially guarantees that IF HYDRA started to split from the Nazi cause, a HUGE portion of their members would remain loyal to the Reich, and HYDRA would collapse in on itself in a civil war. Not every member of HYDRA had personal contact with Schmidt, even if Schmidt wasn't a Nazi; so not everyone would WANT to abandon Nazism because of his teachings, because they wouldn't be able to hear them! Even if they could, surely at least ONE would be loyal to the SS and rat them out to non-HYDRA SS authorities. I think the SS' loyalty to the Reich guarantees this. That's part of why the SS was founded; loyalty to the Nazi cause even if all others (military; courts; whoever) abandoned it. That philosophy was drilled into the heads of every SS man who would later go on to become HYDRA. But Schmidt evidently WAS a Nazi, which is why HYDRA DIDN'T collapse into civil war! Men who are willing to abandon the Nazi cause so readily would not be inducted into the ranks of the Schutzstaffel. There is no way HYDRA could continue to induct men into its ranks as the war went on if they abandoned the SS. It's simply not possible. There was ONE Wehrmacht officer, Albert Battel, a petty lieutenant, who dared defy the SS, and this relatively minor incident made it all the way up to Martin Bormann, Hitler's right hand man. There was outrage and this man was going to be expelled from the Nazi party and arrested right after the war. And this man posed NO threat to the power of the Nazis. Imagine the expediency with which Schmidt would have been arrested if he wasn't a true-blue Nazi. The amount of coincidences that would have to happen for Schmidt to NOT a Nazi is simply not possible. Schmidt and HYDRA were Nazis.