Milestone: Killed by His Champion
Johann Schmidt is the head of Hydra, Hitler's supernatural sciences division, a man convinced he has risen above ordinary men into something like a god. He seizes the Tesseract from a vault in Norway, prizing it not as a weapon but as a key, an artifact fabled to rewrite the laws of physics and unlock doors across the universe. His ambition quickly outgrows the Reich he serves. When the Führer demands his presence in Berlin, Schmidt scoffs that a god does not answer to a man and declares that the Third Reich will fall so Hydra can rise from its ashes.
His grand design is to summon a champion for Hydra from beyond the stars. Hunted relentlessly by Captain Carter, he retreats to his castle in the Black Forest and captures the Hydra Stomper to power his machine. He uses the Tesseract to tear open an interdimensional portal, boasting of the victory at hand. What comes through is no servant. The monstrous creature he calls his champion seizes him in its grip and crushes the life out of him, his reach for godhood ending in the jaws of the thing he set loose.
