Kills in this episode: 2
Johann Schmidt is the head of Hydra, the Nazi deep-science division, and the man who took Erskine's serum before it was ready. The formula amplified everything within him, his intellect and strength alongside his cruelty and megalomania, and left him disfigured, his true face a raw red skull he hides for a time behind a lifelike mask. In a raid on a church vault in Tønsberg, Norway, the jewel he calls the greatest of Odin's treasures, and sets his scientist Arnim Zola to harnessing its cosmic power for weapons that will make even the German high command obsolete.
His ambition outgrows any master he serves. Believing himself walking where the gods once trod, Schmidt breaks from Hitler and turns Hydra toward his own conquest, building a fleet of Tesseract-powered weapons and a bomber armed to level the capitals of the world. His war brings him repeatedly against Captain America, the successful product of the serum he took by force, and their rivalry ends aboard his aircraft. When Schmidt seizes the Tesseract with his bare hand, it opens a gateway across the cosmos and tears him away in a column of light, vanishing him from the earth.
