Adolf Hitler

"Hitler speaks of a thousand year Reich, but he cannot feed his army for a month. His troops spill their blood across every field in Europe. But he is still no closer to achieving his goals."

- Johann Schmidt

Adolf Hitler was the Führer und Reichskanzler of Nazi Germany, the Third Reich, before and during World War II.

Rise to power
"You know, after the last war, they... My people struggled. They... they felt weak... they felt small. Then Hitler comes along with the marching, and the big show, and the flags, and the, and the..."

- Abraham Erskine In the chaotic situation after German defeat in World War I, Hitler formed the Nazi Party and began his slow rise to power, during which he was assisted by his storm troopers, the Sturmabteilung. He gained popular support by promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed Germany into a single-party state based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism.

Meeting Schmidt
"What if the old Norse tales Wagner adopts into his operas are more history that myth, mein Führer? And what the superstitous masses refer to as "magic" is simply the oldest science ever known."

- Johann Schmidt to Adolf Hitler In February 1934 Hitler was at the Deutsches Opernhaus in Berlin. With him were Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Ernst Kaufmann, head of the Sturmabteilung's (SA) Special Weapons Division. There, he met Johann Schmidt, the German Physicist who revealed them his theory that Norse gods and their magic could be more than myth. Hitler was intrigued by Schmidt's ideas, but Kaufmann was less impressed.

A few months later, to gain support from the German Army for his regime, Hitler ordered the assassinations of all higher officers of the Sturmabteilung, including Kaufmann, who was killed by Schmidt, who in the meantime became an officer of Himmler's Schutzstaffel. That purge later became known as the Night of the Long Knives.

Search for Erskine
"And he... he hears of me, and my work, and he finds me, and he says "You." He says "You will make us strong." Well, I am not interested. So he sends the head of HYDRA, his research division, a brilliant scientist by the name of Johann Schmidt."

- Abraham Erskine on Adolf Hitler

When Hitler learned of Dr. Abraham Erskine's work on the Super Soldier Serum, he asked him to use the serum to turn the Germans into a race of super humans, the superior men. Erskine rejected the offer and, knowing very well what Hitler intends to do with Jews, he attempted to escape from Germany. But Hitler sent Johann Schmidt, who in the meantime became the leader of HYDRA, Hitler's research division, to stop him. Schmidt captured Erskine on the German/Swiss border, and sent his family to a concentration camp.

World War II
"The Führer is not accustomed to being ignored, Herr Schmidt. He funds your research because you promised him weapons." "You serve at his pleasure. He gave you this facility as a reward for your injuries." "Reward? Call it what it is. Exile. I no longer reflect his image of Aryan perfection."

- Roeder, Schneider, and Johann Schmidt In 1939, Hitler started World War II, intending to conquer the whole Europe and create the German Empire that would last for a thousand years. When Schmidt's face became disfigured after he injected himself with the unstable version of the Super Soldier Serum, Hitler gave him a military base in the Alps, and funded his research. Schmidt turned the base into the headquarters of HYDRA, where his scientists worked on developing new weapons for the Third Reich. However, Schmidt saw his new post more as an exile than the reward.

Hitler's luck on the battlefield run out when the United States entered World War II in 1941. By 1943, Hitler's armies were beginning to retreat on all fronts in Europe. Hitler then sent three SS officers to Schmidt's base to question him about HYDRA's failure to deliver promised weapons to the German Army. Schmidt showed them his Tesseract powered laser guns, but when they discovered that Schmidt intends to nuke Berlin and overthrow Hitler, Schmidt vaporized them. In May 1945, Hitler's Reich crumbled under the joint offensives of the Allied armies.

He presumed to have commited suicide in order to evade capture after Nazi Germany's defeat.

Personality and traits
"Now Schmidt is a member of the inner circle and he is ambitious. He and Hitler share a passion for occult power and Teutonic myth. Hitler uses his fantasies to inspire his followers, but for Schmidt, it is not fantasy. For him, it is real."

- Abraham Erskine on Johann Schmidt

Adolf Hitler was a megalomaniac German politician who firmly believed in Nietzsche's theory of Übermensch (beyond-human), a race of superhuman beings destined to rule the normal ones. Believing the Germans are such race, he wanted to bring almost all European countries under German rule. Being an anti-Semite, he despised Jews and considered them inferior to the Germans.

He was also interested in Norse mythology and the occult. As stated by Schmidt, Hitler has sent several expeditions to search for the occult relics in the deserts.

Behind the scenes

 * In Marvel Comics, Hitler was killed in 1945 by a super hero Human Torch. His mind was transferred to a cloned body by the Nazi scientist Arnim Zola. The cloned Hitler eventually became known as the Hate-Monger.