User blog comment:KennyChief/S.H.I.E.L.D. is a UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT organization, not International./@comment-6127681-20151013043349/@comment-996391-20151014152817

Kenny, I think you are asking questions that were never meant to be answered. The script writers don't think about those details so much as we do. They just needed to make HYDRA look as evil as possible, and what better way to do that than make HYDRA a Nazi organization? And even then, they managed to portray HYDRA as worse than the Nazis, or should I say more dangerous than the Nazis because they're smarter than the Nazis. HYDRA doesn't waste time on trying to exterminate the "inferior races" because their leader doesn't even believe in that Nazi crap. As for Lohmer, not all of Schmidt's subordinate officers knew his plans (if you were Commander in Chief, would you tell your most secret plan to some petty Colonel?), even Zola didn't know about them until Schmidt vaporized the three SS guys, so we can assume that some HYDRA guys were loyal to the Reich and some didn't care if Schmidt was loyal to the Reich or not. What was important was that they were loyal to him. Take Werner Reinhardt/Daniel Whitehall for example. He had the same SS rank as Schmidt but still served under him and called him the great man. As for why the Wehrmacht and the SS didn't attack HYDRA after 1943, we can assume Hitler never knew what really happened with the messengers he sent to Schmidt, or maybe Schmidt simply lied to Hitler that those three were killed by some resistance group. Remember, even Hitler didn't know about Schmidt's incursion into Norway until the SS intelligence informed him, which means that even before 1943 Schmidt operated very autonomously within the SS. By hiding the truth about what happened with Hitler's messengers, Schmidt could ensure that HYDRA continues its work in the Nazi controlled territories undisturbed by the Nazis. That also explains why Reinhardt still had his SS uniform when he was captured by the S.S.R. in 1945. Anyway, Schmidt would have to be stupid to start an open war against Nazi Germany when his main weapon, the Valkyrie, still wasn't finished. If you remember the museum exhibit scene in CA:TWS, it was said there that HYDRA was a rogue Nazi science division, therefore, by that time it was a well known fact that HYDRA broke ties with the Nazis. As for the post-war HYDRA, we've seen HYDRA working for the Soviets (Ant-Man Prelude), within the US Government (CA:TWS), within S.H.I.E.L.D. (AoS), within the Belgian Government (AoS), but all that time they didn't believe in the ideologies behind those organizations. Remember what John Garrett said to Coulson - ''We had a good thing going, too, waving the S.H.I.E.L.D. flag as hard as we could. I guess we'll be changing colors now.'' - which probably meant HYDRA would find some other organization to suck it out like a parasite. HYDRA doesn't believe in Nazism, HYDRA doesn't believe in Communism, HYDRA doesn't believe in the American capitalism, HYDRA believes only in HYDRA. And as we have seen in the latest AoS episode, the axis of HYDRA's ideology is this: only the strongest shall survive. (except that they have replaced survive with rule the world. But that's basically the only connection between HYDRA's ideology and Nazism, because remember how multinational HYDRA's Council was in AoS, and there are numerous African-Americans within HYDRA's ranks, and I can hardly imagine a good self respecting black guy willingly joining a Nazi organization.