Red Skull (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

"You are deluded Captain. You pretend to be a simple soldier but in reality you are afraid to admit that we have left humanity behind. Unlike you I embrace it proudly, without fear!"

- Red Skull to Captain America about his new powers.

Johann Schmidt, known as the supervillain The Red Skull, is the main antagonist of Captain America: The First Avenger and as a cameo in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He is also briefly mentioned in Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. Red Skull was the leader of HYDRA during the Second World War.

Captain America: The First Avenger
In this adaption, Schmidt forces Dr. Abraham Erskine to use his Super Soldier Serum on him. The unfinished serum caused a side-effect that left him deformed, forcing the Skull to wear a rubber mask of his former self. At the beginning of the movie, Red Skull travels to Norway, to obtain the Tesseract. Using its powers, Arnim Zola develops advanced weapons, that Skull believes will aid in winning the World War. Several high-ranking SS officers come to check upon his plan, Schmidt intends to bomb every major capital on Earth, including Berlin. This rages the officers and Schmidt kills them in order to break free from the Nazi Party. In the meantime, Dr. Erskine uses his finished serum on Steve Rogers, who becomes Captain America, but not before that Heinz Kruger, an undercover assassin kills Erskine. Captain begins to take down HYDRA bases, with Skull finally retreating to his last base in the Swiss Alps. He begins his plan and flies the Valkyrie, his Tesseract powered plane into bombing the United States. Rogers infiltrates the plane and starts a one-on-one battle with Schmidt. Schmidt touches the Tesseract and seemingly disintegrates, leaving his ultimate fate unknown.

Marvel's Agents of Shield
Schmidt is mentioned several times by Daniel Whitehall, the series' incarnation of Commander Kraken.

Personality
Johann Schmidt is a megalomaniac and egocentric genius who firmly believes in the Nazis' misinterpretation of Nietzsche's Übermensch (over-man) concept where a race of superhuman beings are destined to rule the normal ones. Believing himself to be such a man, he used any means necessary to obtain a central position in Adolf Hitler's army, until his conceit made him arrive to the point of believing himself to be greater than Hitler, and thus starting a plan to overthrow him. Unlike other Nazis, Schmidt doesn't believe that the Germans are the destined "master race", but rather that the superior man has yet to be made. In large part because he didn't believe the Germans were the destined 'master race', he also did not personally care to follow the Nazis' infamous holocaust plan against the Jewish race (although he nonetheless used it as a threat against Abraham Erskine to force him to make the serum).

Schmidt is pitiless and cruel, but also a scientific genius, who is able to see beyond appearances and managed to see the truth behind myths believed to be superstition, which are, in reality, fragments of Asgardian origin.

Schmidt was said to be a fully-fledged supporter of the Nazi Party until the incident which left him deformed. The truth is that he worked with the Nazis only so he could use their resources to achieve his own goals, and no longer seemed to share the racial ideals of Nazism. He claims that he was isolated to his palace in the Alps because he "no longer shares Hitler's image of Aryan Perfection". Though he is disillusioned by the Führer's ideals, he is still morally devoid and capable of mass murder. Once a mere professor at the university in Berlin, Schmidt became a cold-blooded killer who would do anything to accomplish his goals. Even his subordinate officers had reasons to fear him as Schmidt had an extremely low tolerance of failure: If they didn't do their job right, death was the only penalty he would give to those who failed him.

Trivia

 * Red Skull is the only villain in the MCU, whose fate is unknown.
 * He is portrayed by Hugo Weaving, who also portrayed Agent Smith in the Matrix films and Megatron in the Transformers film series.