| “ | So many people forget that the first country the Nazis invaded was their own. You know, after the last war, my people struggled. They... they felt weak. They felt small. And then Hitler comes along with the marching and the big show and the flags. | „ |
| ~ Abraham Erskine about Adolf Hitler. |
Adolf Hitler is a supporting antagonist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, serving as the overarching antagonist of the Captain America trilogy and its 2011 tie-in comic book Captain America: First Vengeance.
He is, like in real-life, the leader of the Nazi Party, the Chancellor-turned-dictator of Germany and one of the orchestrators of World War II. However, during the war, Hitler comes to recruit Johann Schmidt into his ranks, approving the formation of HYDRA.
History[]
Past[]
Much like his real-life counterpart, Adolf Hitler was a World War I veteran who, enraged by his country's "humiliation" in World War I, took over the National Socialist German Workers' Party, reshaped it into the Nazi Party and eventually rose through the ranks of the German government to become Chancellor of Germany.
Captain America: First Vengeance[]
In February 1934, Hitler attends one of Richard Wagner's operas, clapping at the performance's ending. On his way out, Hitler meets Johann Schmidt, who intrigues him with his theories about Wagner's operas being more history than myth, asking his aide Ernst Kaufmann to arrange a lunch with Schmidt on his schedule. However, a jealous Kaufmann threatens Schmidt with killing him if he approaches Hitler again. However, Heinrich Himmler recruits Schmidt into the Schutzstaffel (SS)'s ranks, which eventually allows Schmidt to kill Kaufmann and take over his special weapons program when Hitler orders the assassinations of all of the Sturmabteilung members during the Night of the Long Knives.
Upon taking possession of Kaufmann's unit and recruiting Arnim Zola, leading to the formation of HYDRA with Hitler's approval, Schmidt is tasked by Hitler to make the "Superior Man" for his Aryan race ideology, leading Schmidt to kidnap Professor Abraham Erskine at the Germany/Switzerland border to help him in developing a Super Soldier Serum under the threat of sending his wife and children to die in a concentration camp due to their Jewish blood (where they end up dying accidentally due to a typhus outbreak), as Hitler had just enacted his own laws against Jews. However, Erskine's serum ends up disfiguring Schmidt (earning him the nickname of the "Red Skull") while Erskine escapes and defects to the Allies.
Captain America: The First Avenger[]
Hitler doesn't physically appear in the movie, but is mentioned several times. While checking on the American soldiers for candidates to his Super Soldier Serum, Erskine acknowledges how a Super Soldier Serum-powered army would prove to be Hitler's undoing. He then confides to Steve Rogers how Hitler turned Germany against iself with his Nazism and his association with Schmidt.
It's later revealed that Hitler sent Schmidt away after his life-changing accident to a hideout in the Swiss Alps as a "reward" for his injuries so he can continue with his research on weapons, but Schmidt sees Hitler's reward as an exile and stops communicating with him, disillusioned with the flawed Third Reich as he no longer fits within Hitler's Aryan ideal. Annoyed at being ignored, Hitler dispatches his SS high-ranking officers Schneider, Hutter and Roeder to demand updates from Schmidt, but Schmidt reveals to them that HYDRA is officially cutting ties with Hitler and becoming independent as well as his plans to bomb every major city of the planet like Berlin, using the Tesseract to kill the three officers and effectively defecting from Nazi Germany.
In the end, however, the Red Skull doesn't get to enact his plans to use the Tesseract to take over the Earth and rule over the planet as a god, as Captain America and his Howling Commandos foil his plans, resulting in Red Skull seemingly perishing at the power of the Space Stone (whcih was hidden inside the Tesseract) and Captain America seemingly sacrificing himself by crashing into the ocean with the bombs. It's presumed that after this, Captain America's influence over the Allies incited them to keep fighting until they managed to overpower Germany, leading Hitler to commit suicide once Germany's defeat became inevitable just like in real-life.
Legacy[]
Despite Hitler's defeat and death, his influence is felt throughout the franchise. A deleted scene of The Avengers has Steve Rogers learning about what happened during World War II after his disappearance, including Hitler's actions. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a now AI Zola reveals the World War II aftermath days to Captain America and Black Widow while explaining how HYDRA survived well into the 21st century with the help of people like Alexander Pierce. Hitler's crimes would be even cited in Moon Knight by Arthur Harrow as something that Ammit, the Egyptian Death Goddess, could have prevented had she been released from her imprisonment by the Ennead Council.
Trivia[]
- In spite of being the one whom Captain America firmly opposes during World War II and kickstarts the events of the HYDRA storyline (along with Hive) within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Adolf Hitler never comes across directly with Captain America.
- Though there's concept art of Captain America standing on an unconscious Hitler and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige stating that he would have liked to make Captain American punch Hitler out like he does in the comic books, Feige stated that the reason Captain America didn't directly face Hitler and the Nazis in Captain America: The First Avenger was because they wished to make a World War II movie through the prism of the Marvel Universe, which is why they felt that HYDRA would serve as better main antagonists than the Nazis in spite of there being some Nazi villains.
- Red Skull's line about Hitler "looking out for trinkets in the desert" was intended to be a reference to the one from the Indiana Jones film series, specifically to his plot in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This may have been intentional, as Kevin Feige intended for Captain America: The First Avenger to not feel like a "period piece" and Joe Johnson, who worked on the special effects of the first Indiana Jones film, directing the first Captain America film.
- It's highly theorized that the Old German Man who faces Loki Laufeyson when he tries to force all Germans to kneel before him in The Avengers was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, given his defiance towards the God of Mischief and his claims that men like Loki always exist when the Asgardian god refuses such notion.
External Links[]
- Adolf Hitler on the Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki
- Adolf Hitler on the Marvel Wiki
