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This article, Johann Schmidt (Earth-61615), is property of MarvelousMarty. |
Martha Schmidt (mother; deceased);
Susan Scarbo (former lover; deceased)
Eliza Schmidt (daughter; deceased),
Albert Malik (son-in-law; deceased),
Sinthea Schmidt (granddaughter)
Captain America
Vol 1 1
History
Great power has always baffled primitive men, and freedom has always been nothing but a petty illusion for deluded weaklings to keep pioneers like us from harnessing its fullest potential. That is the truth of this reality, ladies and gentlemen... We have to live with it.
- — Red Skull
- — Red Skull
Early Years
Johann Hermann Schmidt was born in Hamburg, northern Germany in 1898 as an only child to a middle class family. Despite his somewhat abusive, manipulative, and highly demanding parents who often berate him due to their failures and struggles as a family, Johann would still eventually grow up to become a physicist and later a professor at one of the universities in Berlin due to his remarkable intelligence and passion with the science of matter and the mysteries surrounding the universe, something he and some of his peers had perceived to be exceptional, but something his own family had feared that they had unintentionally made their own child a worse version of themselves.
However, as years went by, his interest would be slowly swayed over to different mythologies, particularly Norse, which relates to the notion on how some of the human race could achieve the state of superiority through the ways of magic, with Johann himself believing that someone like him could lead others into rediscovering such divine and ancient power with science. In doing so, Johann even believed in the Nazi Party's misinterpretation of Nietzsche's Übermensch (overman) concept, the "Aryan race", where a race of superhuman beings are destined to rule the normal ones.
Upon meeting Adolf Hitler, Schmidt had intrigued him with his theories, while Heinrich Himmler had recruited Johann to the Schutzstaffel during the formation and the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany. When he was challenged by other generals and confidants of Hitler, Johann didn't hesitate slaughtering his enemies, both inside and outside the organization, in secret as well as gaining trust through recruitment, notably recruiting the Swiss scientist Arnim Zola as his right-hand man. Johann has also made alliances with other powerful figures, such as the nobleman Baron Heinrich Zemo, in order to maintain his position, influence and power as a general.
World War II
The Red Skull aims to gain absolute power with the Tesseract
In the following years of the Second World War, Johann rose into the higher rank of Obergruppenführer in which he secretly founded Hydra from his own SS division, the special weapons division of the Nazi Schutzstaffel and a modern-day incarnation of the ancient society. Unbeknownst to the general public nor his allies and enemies at the time, Schmidt based Hydra on an ancient society that worshiped a powerful, mythlike figure Inhuman known as Hive; this past belief being similar to all Schmidt's beliefs and theories. His insatiable quest for becoming the superior man led him to test the prototype version of Abraham Erskine's Super Soldier Serum on himself, resulting with him becoming hideously disfigured as well as gaining the infamous name of Red Skull. Continuing on leading Hydra, Red Skull had searched and found the cosmic artifact known as Tesseract, the secret vessel for the Space Stone, which he had believed could help him to control the world.
During his advance to power as Hydra's head, Johann had fathered a daughter with one of his followers Susan Scarbo, named Eliza, who would end up escaping the chaos of the war's final months by living a more normal life into the United States. Eliza would later meet and fall in love with a man named Albert Malik, as the two would later give birth to Johann's granddaughter, Sinthea, by late 1988. However, despite Eliza's wish for her daughter to live a more normal life free from the haunting image of her absent father, Sin's growth was oversaw and eventually handled by Hydra operative Elisa Sinclair, who indoctrinated her with Hydra's views as she grew up being a remarkable secret agent of her grandfather's grand secret society in the contemporary era once Sin's parents were assassinated from a staged crash by the Winter Soldier.
However, Red Skull's plans were challenged by the Allies' first and only known super soldier (at the time), Captain America, whom with the Howling Commandos had destroyed the Hydra facilities, not to mention being some of his allies starting to doubt, betray, or defect from Hydra, which included Baron Zemo, something that gravely fragmented the solidity of Hydra. Once the Red Skull had launched his final offensive, intending to bring the United States down onto its knees with a Tesseract-powered missile, he was intercepted by Captain America. Captain America ultimately confronted the Red Skull on board a Hydra Jet known as the Valkyrie, where the Tesseract is kept. Even before Schmidt could have been melted and possibly teleported into the mysterious gateway by the Tesseract, Steve immediately threw his shield at Schmidt's right hand where he was holding the cube, knocking the Tesseract from the hands of the Red Skull, but at the cost of losing Schmidt's own melted left hand in order to save him. The jet crashes into the icy cold waters, where Rogers was presumed dead and was frozen for approximately sixty years, and so was Johann to the future followers he never knew would survive with Zola who was recruited to join S.H.I.E.L.D. during Operation Paperclip, making the young agency the perfect host for Hydra to regrow as a parasite in the following decades, succeeding the flame of Schmidt's legacy in ages.
A Modern World
In the early 2000s, the once cryogenically-hibernated Red Skull had mysteriously woken up from the icy waters of the Arctic into a hidden base in the Alps, with the assistance of Hydra double agents within S.H.I.E.L.D. who handed their modern founder into the hands of his right-man Arnim Zola (who achieved immortality by transferring his mind onto a complex computer system), saving his once fallen superior into the modern era. Grateful that his own society had outlived his legacy, the Red Skull went on live accomplishing his ultimate return for global domination starting using the civilian codename of Dell Rusk, a politician who was directly affiliated with the United States Department of State due to his connections with the World Security Council, whose half of its superiors were actually working for Hydra in secrecy as S.H.I.E.L.D. sleeper operatives, thus giving Dell to oversee his set of missions unfold in action 24/7 for his great plan for revolution to dominate the globe to his will.
The real Dell Rusk was long dead, only to be impersonated even after his passing, and had all of the access to his property taken over by Hydra superiors and had every decision and activity be credited under his name among a few other deceased or missing individuals. It was during his resurface into leadership when Johann finally met his granddaughter Sinthea for the very first time, although the two didn't completely got along well in their first few meetings, as while the old head has grown to respect and was honored to meet his own kin and what she was capable of as a to-be-head of Hydra, he was perplexed by her ruthlessness and mental instability, giving him such conflicting feelings of either pride to himself that his future in succession would keep on living once he falters, or inner insecurity that she may end up becoming a better supreme of Hydra than he was.
Nevertheless of his inner doubts, Johann embraced his daughter's fate as he took her under his wing and tutelage, but she would often take advantage of this time to hang out with fellow S.H.I.E.L.D.-inserted, Hydra agent Brock Rumlow, known by the codename Crossbones, whom the two would often partner up in covert operations. Moreover, a loyal, competent, and persistent follower named Elisa Sinclair, the same agent who raised and trained Johann's granddaughter, also found herself obsessing over the Red Skull up until his return that other subordinates would called her as Madame Hydra, but the head of Hydra himself was unfortunately disinterested in engaging with any form of romantic or intimate relationships whatsoever, deeming it as a distraction in making his objective into a reality.
Ultimate Retaliation
Hydra Uprising
By the early 2010s, a few months after resurfacing to the modern world and joining the Avengers, the heroic Captain America discovered that Hydra, whom he thought had dissolved in 1945, had existed in secret as a parasite within S.H.I.E.L.D., and that they were planning to use S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new Project Insight to launch a new world order. Hydra's apparent endgame was the overthrow of world governments to establish a fascist, totalitarian global state; thus preemptively eliminating potential threats to their new world order. With its existence publicly known, Hydra started a war against the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D., taking over many S.H.I.E.L.D. bases, but was still backfired by S.H.I.E.L.D.'s counteractive defenses. S.H.I.E.L.D. then manages to take down most of Hydra's subsidiaries and branches, leaving only a few to restart Hydra over and over again.
Members who still followed the original beliefs of Hydra took part in this as a means of smoothly and immediately transferring control of a groomed Earth to their Inhuman idol. Additionally, Rogers' best friend Bucky Barnes was revealed to still be alive, now operating as the Winter Soldier. Along with fellow Avenger Black Widow, Rogers teamed up with other loyal S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives and Sam Wilson, and helped bring an end to the Hydra Uprising. With the immediate threat of Hydra quelled, Rogers and Wilson embarked on a personal quest to locate Barnes. Unbeknownst to anyone's awareness, Hydra survived its endgame with the Red Skull as he made his way into the modern world, longer than his own archrival Captain America has.
Nimrod Invasion
Schmidt disguises himself as Baron Zemo in the launching of the Movement Alliance
At some point before Hydra Uprising, Johann found his way establishing a temporary Hydra base in a long abandoned stronghold in Germany once belonging to the late Baron Heinrich Zemo, and proceeded to masquerade his old ally turned enemy since the latter's fate was never fully disclosed to the public or authorities since the Zemo family were attacked by a small fleet of Chitauri modified and controlled by Hydra as a part of experiment later covered up. The Red Skull wasn't aware that the last known living member of the Zemo aristocratic family, Helmut Zemo, and such failure of this awareness would ultimately take a heavy blow in Schmidt's grand plan.
A country-wide terrorist assault unexpectedly unleashed upon the United States of America as a part of Hydra's endgame after the events of Hydra Uprising, threatening the country into being torn apart by the organization's subsidiary group, the remaining anti-government militia of Hydra. The chaos and destruction caused by the anti-government forces were eventually prevented further, thanks to the help of the Ultimates' efforts on taking down Hydra in the wake of attempting to tear the entire country apart.
However, unfortunate to the heroes, the Nimrod Invasion was just one of Hydra's stepping stone unleashed by the Red Skull, so it could finally successfully launch its true schemes on world domination and supremacy. From that point on, the Movement, an ultimate global alliance of super-villains, criminals, terrorists, and rogue organizations around the world, was finally commenced by Hydra and its fellow founders, in order to make their global protocol truly successful.
Movement Alliance
Red Skull joined forces with other fellow diabolical masterminds of evil to form the Movement Alliance
Receiving the persistence of superheroes which took a great damage to Hydra's strength during Hydra Uprising, the Red Skull knew well enough during the subsequent Nimrod Invasion that Hydra would never survived and last longer alone if he were to continue with his master plan for total world domination, rendering him to finally act upon forming an alliance what he would call the Movement. With enough wealth, technology, and resources to access at his disposal, Johann went on to contact and recruit some of the greatest diabolical minds in society which shares a similar vision for his "perfect world" for a "far superior" humanity.
Along with Schmidt himself, the Movement was also indirectly, "spiritually" founded by another diabolical figure who was Nathaniel Essex, the seemingly immortal and genius mutate geneticist, idealist, & revolutionist (usually declaring himself as a "mutant" to fool the public, due to his frequent involvements with and against the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants) often going by his infamous epithet of Mister Sinister. Followed by Sinister as the second founder and leader of the Movement Alliance, comes the third leader who was thought to be Norman Osborn, the infamous and monstrous Green Goblin.
In reality, however, Osborn had his own agendas were merely an appointed associate to a more influential and powerful figure, especially when it comes to a political and economical standpoint in the state of New York, considering that he is one of the few people who loves New York more than any other person there was throughout its history. That figure would later be revealed to be none other than the Kingpin of Crime himself, Wilson Fisk, who secretly played the role as the third main commander of the Movement, with his base of operations mostly taking place in the heart of the state. As a powerful triumvirate, Schmidt, Essex, & Fisk became the "supreme leaders" of the Movement Alliance.
While the rest of the Avengers handles the threat ongoing at the cities of New York and some other cities across the United States, Captain America alone decided on accompanying Director Coulson and S.H.I.E.L.D. in continuously finding out who was the highest superior leader of the Hydra faction, to which they have discovered the supposed mastermind to be Baron Zemo (in actuality, the Red Skull in disguise), with him publicly implying through the digital and billboards screens across the nation, that Hydra's motivation for founding, leading, and supporting the Movement was an act of vengeance against S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of authorities since the Hydra Uprising and the Nimrod Invasion, all for not "seeing the bigger picture" of their plans for the future of the world.
Since S.H.I.E.L.D. had found out Hydra's primary facility since the Hydra Uprising, the Captain and his tactical team unit had infiltrated the Movement's secret headquarters for Hydra, which was the Mount, located in Nevada. But, by the last moment, Rogers was locked inside the room with Zemo. Rogers then confronted Zemo. In their final duel, Rogers manages to get the upper hand over Zemo in hand-to-hand combat, where he had the chance to tear off the villain's mask. However, as he sees the mastermind's true face, Rogers could only stare in disbelief as Baron Zemo had turned and revealed his true face. Rogers was still in shock in awe as he stood still, only to find out that the true mastermind of Hydra's reemergence was his archnemesis during World War II, Schmidt himself.
Unbeknownst to the Ultimate Alliance, the Movement's main headquarters (located at The Mount, Nevada) were suddenly destroyed in the process during the confrontation between Rogers and Schmidt, thanks to the actions of a mysterious Hydra operative that was Mark Gruler, who used Hydra's several heavily armed, satellite-linked Terror-Carriers against them, destroying their every base and facility. Gruler's true motives and reasons for bringing down the Movement were yet to be revealed, until later, which Captain America himself would find out. However, this following event made the heroes in creating the subsequent opportunity into confronting and defeating all the villainous leaders behind all of this, and finally stop the conflict, albeit at the massive toll of casualties all over the world, which reached to almost more than 15 million lives who were inevitably affected by the consequences of war, the very brief but brutal conflict which only lasted for approximately one to three weeks of chaos and destruction worldwide.
Surviving Alliances
Red Skull, on the run since his great defeat long after Ultimate War
In the wake of the month-long war against the Ultimate Alliance and the defeat of the Movement Alliance, the Red Skull still survived along with a few Hydra factions, including his granddaughter Sin, that could no longer face any opposing authority as they went in hiding, but unfortunately, his vision and all his efforts fell crumbling into the ground with little chance of him achieving his great dream ever again, at least not in the next several years. As the years went by, the Red Skull struggled to remain in power over the leadership of his own organization as it slowly fragmented into different sects, with several united faction known as the Secret Council of Serpents were able to stay stronger together, even without their original leader's direct guidance and involvement, deeming themselves to be independent from Schmidt's old-fashioned, more radical ways. Even Johann's own granddaughter, Sinthea, has eventually disowned him despite frequently making contact with him, believing that her grandfather's failure would someday pave way for her success in doing what he couldn't accomplish as the head of Hydra.
When the original founder of Hydra, the Inhuman Hive, had found his way back to Earth after centuries-long exile after the sacrifice of Hydra agent and general Grant Ward, and faced both the modern Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D., the former's mortal enemies, the Red Skull watched in dismay as he witnessed Madame Hydra and most of her faction get killed by Hive the moment he decided to form his own battalion of Inhumans under his coercion until Hive's quest ended with his defeat against the joint forces of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its heroic allies, notably the Inhuman Royal Family. Later on around the early 2020s, Schmidt and his loyal followers became one of the latest bounty for the anti-heroic, government-sponsored Thunderbolts, led by Helmut Zemo, the man who used the Mark Gruler persona, infiltrated Hydra, and somewhat single-handedly took down the Movement Alliance's core at the climax of Ultimate War to avenge his father's death and impersonation by the Red Skull. While most of his faction were finished off or apprehended, Johann was chosen to be spared by Zemo himself, since the latter realized the now weak Red Skull had nothing else to lose ever since his lifelong goal had already fallen, thus helping faked Johann's death by shooting him multiple times before throwing him off into the unknown back in hiding with painful yet non-fatal injuries.
Eventually, after a few years of being a lone wolf on the run, the Red Skull found interest with technological genius George Tarleton, who was transcended his mind and form into a digital one as M.O.D.O.K., the founder and leader of A.I.M. who successfully recreated an artificial Tesseract which he weaponized during Ultimate War. The Red Skull and his remaining faction proposed to join allegiances with A.I.M. which its Scientist Supreme Triumvirate: Tarleton, Monica Rappaccini, and Franklin Hall had agreed to process with their new coalition. The Red Skull continued in order to restore the great power of Hydra and reclaim his own authority over the very society he had built back in his day, challenging the Secret Council of the Serpents, factions wherein his own granddaughter was a leader of the fragmented faction after Elisa Sinclair died during Hive's short-lived return, straying away from the Red Skull's approach and direction since his defeat in Ultimate War.
Battle for America
Living in the Framework
Schmidt contemplating his whole life during his long entrapment within the Framework
Ultimately, Johann Schmidt's authority and intimidation as the leader of his Hydra faction was no longer as menacing as it was before, as M.O.D.O.K. and the rest of the Scientist Supreme Triumvirate, along with Rappaccini and Graviton, unhesitatingly killed the Red Skull and betrayed his alliance with Hydra, transferring and trapping his consciousness inside the Framework along with other Hydra loyalists which A.I.M. couldn't convince to join their ranks. Within the digital world, the Red Skull watched as Advanced Idea Mechanics twisted his ideas to make a world ruled by Hydra. The only irony was the fact that Johann's life in the framework was everything but power nor special, stemming from his subconscious regret that he could've live a normal life if his obsession with superiority and supremacy didn't last than already was. When the former Hydra leader had discovered the arrival of Captain America in the same digitally-simulated mindscape which he was in, Johann and his own archnemesis were mutually reluctant at teaming up, wherein they came into a simulated world free from death, as the two met the digital constructs many fallen (with some who were thought to be) heroes and villains that have perished in the past due to Captain's failure to save them, both the people he lost starting his debut as Captain America in World War II until his return in the the Modern Age.
Some of these Framework constructs included his fellow Hydra subordinates who have fallen in the past, including Arnim Zola's digital consciousness who was locked in the Framework by the superior Tarleton. In spite the two momentary feeling guilt and hopelessness, Steve and Johann eventually found a way to communicate with his teammates from the real world without getting caught by A.I.M. or any of its accomplices, helping each other simultaneously in order to help the Captain escape the Framework and help them defeat the terrorist organization's tyrannical and destructive plot as well. Throughout his journey across the simulated cities of the Framework, the hero and villain discovered through the fragments M.O.D.O.K. has left on the simulation, including the memories of George Tarleton, the villain's former and original self, due to the fact that the Framework was heavily modified by Tarleton that his own consciousness was somehow connected with it. Meanwhile outside the real world, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Ultimates dealt with Graviton's threat. Unbeknownst to the rest of his surviving faction in the real world, Johann began to contemplate whether his rivals' and enemies' viewpoints of altruism and virtue should be taken into consideration, hearing out Steve Rogers' hopeful remark that the Framework may have opened Schmidt the doors on the chance of becoming a "better man," despite his supremacist beliefs and hateful philosophies in the past centuries of his tyrannical legacy.
One Terminal Reunion
With the additional help and assistance of his fallen allies' digital constructs, whom Steve was still tearfully joyous to be reunited with for that one day even though they're just A.I. duplicates based on his memories, the Captain was able to figure out what M.O.D.O.K.'s plan on the real world was: releasing a countless swarm of deadly techno-organic creatures originating from a future divergent reality (Cable's former home), believing it would ensure A.I.M.'s path to overtaking the country, deluded into seeing themselves as "the future of mankind," starting with America. Steve and Johann eventually reached their finish line, moments before Tarleton decided to delete and reformat the Framework with the intention to erase each and every consciousness that still exists there.
Unfortunate for Steve, Johann was disillusioned by the last moment, thinking it was all Tarleton's plan for Schmidt to contemplate on his life and make him doubt enough that he would back down from his crusade, something that was also being done by A.I.M. in a different method. In such realization, he reverted back to his true colors and tried to betray the Captain merely out of his vengeful senses against both the hero and M.O.D.O.K.'s actions, only for the villain to be thwarted by his fallen enemies seconds before all of Framework was fully deleted, wiping out Schmidt's consciousness in the process, thus bringing about the threat of the original Red Skull to an end. Johann Schmidt recalled every single fragment of his memory, from the moment of his birth until that same moment wherein he slowly disintegrated with the rest of the Framework's simulation.
Powers and Abilities
Powers
Artificially Enhanced Physiology: As a result of the formula developed by Abraham Erskine which was considered to be the precursor of the Super Soldier Formula, Schmidt was horribly disfigured, but has also obtained incredible attributes, such as an enormous strength, speed, stamina and reflexes peak human levels, and even his intelligence increased which led him into becoming a war mastermind.
- Enhanced Strength
- Enhanced Speed
- Enhanced Agility
- Enhanced Durability
- Enhanced Stamina
- Advanced Longevity
- Regenerative Healing Factor
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| Intelligence |
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| Strength* |
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| Speed* |
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Abilities
- Genius Intelligence
- Master Tactician
- Expert Scientist
- Experienced Physician
- Expert Pilot & Driver
- Expert Combatant
Strength level
Class 14+
Weaknesses
- Megalomaniac
- Superiority Complex
Paraphernalia
Equipment:
- Photostatic Veil (formerly; destroyed)
- Advanced Prosthetic Left Hand (formerly; destroyed)
Transportation:
- Various owned vehicles
- Rolls Royce (formerly; destroyed)
- Focke-Wulf Triebflügel (formerly; destroyed)
- Valkyrie Bomber (formerly; destroyed)
Weapons:
- Various advanced weaponry
- Dust of Death
- Luger P08
Notes
- No special notes.
- ↑ Modern Comics: Ultimate War Vol 1 10
Trivia
- No trivia.
See Also
- Appearances of Johann Schmidt (Earth-61615)
- Character Gallery: Johann Schmidt (Earth-61615)
- Quotations by Johann Schmidt (Earth-61615)
Discover and Discuss
- Search News for: Red Skull · Johann Hermann Schmidt · Johann Schmidt (Earth-61615)
Links and References
- None.