Helmut Zemo (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

"I admit it: this war is my doing. The Avengers destroyed my home, they stole my family from me. So what better revenge than to have them fight each other and tear themselves apart?"

- Helmut Zemo confessing his true plan to destroy the Avengers

Helmut Zemo is the primary antagonist of the 2016 Marvel Cinematic Universe film, ''Captain America: Civil War. ''

He is a former soldier-turned-terrorist mastermind who is bent on destroying the Avengers to avenge his family's demise. As he knew that he would not be able to head them on, he devised a scheme to manipulate the Avengers into fighting and defeating each other.

He is portrayed by Daniel Brühl, who also portrayed Fredrick Zoller in Inglorious Basterds.

Origins
Helmut Zemo is a former Slovakian soldier who lived a happy life with his family in Sokovia. However, his happiness was cut short when the evil android Ultron destroyed Sokovia, which tragically cost the lives of Zemo's family. Though Ultron was defeated and destroyed by the Avengers, Zemo angrily blames the Avengers for causing his family's death (since they were the ones responsible for the creation of Ultron, despite the fact that they have no malicious intentions of doing so), and vowed to destroy the team at all costs.

However, he knew that he would not be able to fight them personally, as people more powerful than him had tried that and failed. So he devised a plan to manipulate the Avengers to turn against each other. After Black Widow released multiple coded HYDRA files following the death of Alexander Pierce and the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., Zemo spent all his time trying to decode them. He eventually learned about a secret facility in which HYDRA created the Winter Soldier and that HYDRA used trigger words which would ensure his complete obedience. From the files that Black Widow released, Zemo found out where the leader of the Winter Soldier facility lived.

Beginning of His Manipulations and Killing Karpov
"When S.H.I.E.L.D. Fell ,Black Widow released HYDRA Files to the public. Millions of pages ,much of it encrypted ,Not easy to decypher ,but i have experience and patience. A man can do anything if he has those."

- Zemo to Karpov At the beginning of the movie, Zemo drives to the home of the former HYDRA agent Vasily Karpov, deliberately crashing his own car into Karpov's car. Acting as if it was an accident, Zemo rings at Karpov's door claiming that he wants to peacefully settle the matter. However, once Karpov opens the door, Zemo knocks him out and hangs him upside down over a sink which slowly fills with water. While the water rises, Zemo smashes a wall in the agent's house in with a sledgehammer. In a secret storage, he finds a book which contain the trigger words to activate the Winter Soldier. With the book, he returns to the HYDRA agent and asks for the location of the facility. However, Karpov refuses to talk and ends up being subsequently drowned by Zemo.

Bombing the UN Meeting at Vienna and Killing T'Challa's Father
As the next step of his master plan, Zemo bombs the UN meeting in Vienna, resulting the deaths of the Wakadan king T'Chaka and several others. He then proceeds to frame the Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes for the bombing, causing T'Chacka's son Prince T'Challa (the Black Panther) to personally hunt down Bucky to avenge his father's death. This was coincided when signing was put into place for the Sokovia Accords, a framework that would place the Avengers under government oversight, causing a friction between two factions of the Avengers; one led by Rogers against the accords, and the other led by Stark supporting the accords.

Framing Bucky Barnes and Re-Activating the Winter Soldier
"Longing ,Rusted, Seventeen ,Daybreak ,Furnance ,Nine ,Benign ,Homecoming ,One ,Freight Car. Soldier?"

- Zemo ,re-activating Barnes as the Winter Soldier

Barnes, as well as Rogers and Sam Wilson, are arrested by a special task force and brought to a Secret Service Office in Berlin, in accordance to Zemo's plans. Zemo, who had previously killed a psychiatrist who was supposed to make a psychiatric evaluation on Barnes, takes the man's place and triggers Barnes with the HYDRA key words. Barnes is forced to reveal to Zemo the location of the HYDRA base, which is located in Siberia. To escape the building, Zemo releases Barnes, who attacks Rogers and Wilson when they try to arrest Zemo. Rogers eventually manages to free Barnes from the trigger word's influence, but Zemo has already escaped and headed for Siberia. Around the same time, Romanoff learns of the truth that Zemo was the true culprit behind the bombings and informs Stark, who heads over to Siberia with Rogers and Barnes.

Final Levels of His Plan and Defeat
At the base in Siberia, Zemo has located the facility and found the five other Winter Soldiers who are still in cryo-sleep. Barnes, Rogers, and Stark arrive as well, believing that Zemo intends to unleash the Winter Soldiers on the world, but they are surprised to see that Zemo had killed them all. Zemo, who has bunkered himself in a safe room, reveals that his intent to use the Winter Soldiers and the Vienna bombings were nothing but ruses to lure the Avengers to turn against each other in revenge for his family's demise. He proceeds to enact the final part of his plan by playing exclusive security footage of Stark's parents being murdered by Barnes when he was being brainwashed by HYDRA in 1991. An enraged Stark, learning that Rogers was aware of the truth, turns on Barnes, forcing Rogers to fight him. The battle ends in stalemate with Rogers disabling Stark's armor after Stark blasts off Barnes' robotic arm. Following the aftermath of the battle, Rogers escapes with Barnes, leaving his shield (which was made by Stark's late father) behind.

Witnessing the beginning of the battle and satisfied by the outcome, Zemo heads to the surface, where he is confronted by T'Challa, who has followed the trio behind the shadows and now knows the truth behind his father's death. However, having learned about Zemo's loss and seeing what the pursuit of vengeance has turned him into, T'Challa decides to spare Zemo's life. After deleting the last voice mail of his wife from his phone, Zemo declares his work to be done and prepares to commit suicide to join his dead family by shooting himself in the head with a revolver. However, T'Challa stops him just in time and delivers him to government agent Ross, who arrests Zemo for his crimes ,ultimately defeating him.

In the end, as Zemo is being taken into custody, Ross asks him how it feels after so much scheming that his grand plan failed. Zemo responds that despite his fate, he still has succeeded in tearing the Avengers apart to bring justice for his family's demise. This was affirmative as Zemo's actions have caused the Avengers in total disarray as many of the members (including Rogers) have left the team in shame, leaving only Stark, Rhodes, Vision, and Peter Parker to remain as the sole members of the team.

It is unknown what happened to Zemo afterwards, though he is most likely to given a lifetime sentence in prison or even a death sentence for his crimes against the Avengers.

Abilites
"I knew i could not kill them. More powerful men than me have tried. But ,if i could get them to kill each other...."

- Zemo ,confesses that he couldn't use his strength and fighting to kill the Avengers so he manipulated them.


 * Master Tactician: Zemo, as the former intelligence officer and commander of the elite Sokovian paramilitary tactical unit EKO Skorpion, is a brilliant tactician, being able to mastermind a series of events in order to get his revenge against the Avengers for their role in the destruction of Sokovia and the death of his family. He was also smart enough to know that he has no hopes of killing the Avengers, even if he had raised an army. So then, Zemo decided that it would instead be better to manipulate them into destroying themselves, which he successfully does.
 * Multilingual: Zemo can speak his native Sokovian, as well as English, German, and Russian.
 * Master Strategist: Zemo is a very genius man ,he knows how to attack The Avengers in the right time.
 * Master Manipulator: Zemo succeeded in his master plan to manipulate the team into turning against each other ,thus ,he drove them into fighting and defeating each other.
 * Resources: He killed a psychiartist named Theo Broussard in order to approach to Barnes ,he went to a hotel room to hide this incident and maked sure that anyone will not suspecting him.
 * Intelligence: Bruhl noticed that Zemo is a very smart guy ,so that proves that he is an highly intelligent man.

Trivia

 * In the comics, he was German and an agent of HYDRA.
 * Brühl, who was cast due to his German accent, did not feel the role was a stereotype, saying, "It's not a guy who's mean and sinister, but he's actually very clever - a very smart guy who does everything out of a very understandable reason and motivation." He also stated that Zemo may also appear in future MCU films, with Moore adding that, while Zemo has a purpose in this film, it is more to set up a future film.
 * Zemo is the only main villain of the MCU ,whose his plans were succeeded ,he was succeeded to drive The Avengers into against each other and defeated them ,but he failed to bring to their deaths.