Ernst Kaufmann

Ernst Kaufmann
Real Name	Ernst Kaufmann
Alias(es)	Graf Von Kaufmann
Gender	Male
Title(s)	Graf Gruppenführer
Status	Deceased
Appearances
Comic	Captain America: First Vengeance

"Graf Von Kaufmann handpicked all these men, Herr Schmidt. They're loyal to him to the death."

―An SS trooper to Johann Schmidt^[src]

Ernst Kaufmann was a German nobleman who joined the Nazi Party after World War I.

Biography

"You would be a “storm” trooper Kaufman. I will bring them thunder."

―Johann Schmidt^[src]

Nothing is known about Kaufmann's early life, except that he was born in a family of German nobles. His family posessed a castle in the Bavarian Alps.

At some point after World War I, Kaufmann joined Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, and became an officer of Nazi "storm troops", the Sturmabteilung (SA). He was capable enough to achieve the rank of Gruppenführer (Major General).

After the 1933 election in Germany, when the Nazis came to power, Kaufmann was the commanding officer of the SA's special weapons division. In February 1934, Kaufmann, Hitler, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), were at the Duetsches Opernhaus in Berlin where they watched one of Richard Wagner's operas. After the opera, they met Johann Schmidt, the German physicist who revealed them his theory that magic could be “the oldest science ever known”. Hitler was intrigued by Schmidt's ideas, but Kaufmann was less impressed. Schmidt offered to conduct research in Kaufmann's special weapons division, but was violently rejected. However, Himmler was more interested in Schmidt's ideas, and took him under his wing.

A few months later, during the great purge that later became known as the Night of the Long Knives, almost the entire leadership of the SA was eliminated by the SS troops. Schmidt, now an officer of the SS, have personally killed Kaufmann and took control of his weapons program.

External links

• Ernst Kaufmann on Marvel Database