User blog comment:KennyChief/S.H.I.E.L.D. is a UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT organization, not International./@comment-6127681-20151013043349/@comment-6127681-20151013214835

This is where I will have a friendly disagreement about policy; i will make no attempt to argue or change the policy here, so rest easy gentlemen :) I, personally, do not accept deleted scenes as canon. Furthermore, I think in this case that scene does contradict established continuity. The line in the film about the battle where the 107th was captured reads "Schmidt sent out a force to Azzano. Two hundred men went up against him, and less than 50 returned. Your audience contained what was left of the 107th. The rest were killed or captured." This implies that in the film, the 107th sought to take a position held by HYDRA and their unit was decimated, and the survivors were captured, save for fifty of them. This excludes, at least in my interpretation, the participation of the Wehrmacht in that battle. This also provides a satisfactory explanation for how the 107th wound up in HYDRA custody.

Regarding that comic, all I have to say is HYDRA lies. They lie and lie and lie to accomplish their goals. If they needed the help of a Jewish man to make the super-soldier serum for the Nazis, of course they would pretend to not believe in Nazi racial theory. This happened in reality too with the Nazis. Jewish officers in the military were given special treatment if they were valuable enough. Judenrein councils were often spared the brunt of Nazi aggression and at times even received objectively good rewards and incentives for co-operation. If Abraham Erskine existed in our world, but not HYDRA, the Nazis would treat him the same way Schmidt did in those comic panels. The entire history of the Third Reich is littered with examples. Also, see Colonel Lohmer's appearance in the MCU comics to see how racism was always an integral part of the HYDRA philosophy.

Regarding your Schmidt-Stalin query, well, in reality, Nazi scientists wound up working in the United States through Project Paperclip and in the Soviet Union through Operation Osoaviakhim, and in Great Britain through a variety of projects including Operation Surgeon. This did not make them loyal Capitalists (the Nazis hated capitalism), nor communists (obviously the Nazis hated "bolshevism"), nor loyal to the British Crown (Hitler initially sought an alliance with Britain, to be sure, but we all know how that turned out). They all served themselves to some degree, just like Schmidt.

As I've alluded to, I think the reason people don't like being called Nazis in the MCU is that people inextricably link Nazism to Hitler, and HYDRA was not a fan of Hitler. They're still Nazis. The S.H.I.E.L.D. handbook says so.

If Schmidt hated Nazism SO much, why did he voluntarily join the SS? Wouldn't it make more sense to move somewhere else, like the United States? Why did he initially become a member of Hitler's inner circle? Why did he seek a friendship with Heinrich Himmler?

If Schmidt and the Nazis really had that much of a rift, how and why was HYDRA allowed to continue operating in Nazi territory? Where did they get the funding from for their projects? Why would the Nazis attack Jewish and Soviet partisans in Belarus but not a nuclear-armed political insurgency in the heart of their country, despite having a Reserve Army expressly for a purpose such as this? Why would Schmidt ever risk his life fighting in Poland despite not needing to for his plans to succeed? How could he kill an SS-Oberst-Gruppenfurer (THE highest rank an SS officer could attain besides Reichsfuhrer-SS, held only by Himmler himself), if he didn't have connections to the anti-Hitler, but still VERY Nazi, German High Command? How could HYDRA end up in possession of Afrikakorps material so late in the war, as seen in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 2 Episode 1, if they were at war with the Wehrmacht? Why would Schmidt make a reference to the Holocaust when he says "there are always more workers"? I think the only difference between the bulk of SS troops and the bulk of HYDRA troops is whether their loyalties were to Hitler or Schmidt; just a bloodier version of modern politics. It's like Trump vs Sanders. Different personalities, but in the end you're picking an American leader: Hitler or Schmidt, in the end you're picking a Nazi leader.