Anonymous asked: It baffles me how you could think making Steve Rogers (a paragon of hope and virtue), comics character created by Jews and making him a Nazi is a good idea. People aren't gasping because it's a good "plot twist" people feel physically ill. It's upsetting and offensive how do the writers not care about the way people are reacting?
Sorry you don’t like it.
But Hydra are not Nazis and were never meant to be. They used Hydra in the Cap movie so as not to have to sully that family movie with Nazi soldiers. But in the comics, they were meant to just be a rival spy organization like SPECTRE.
What? I know I’m not the most knowledgeable on comic book lore, but I swear Hydra = Nazi is like… a known thing? With stuff from canon comics to back it up?
Nope. Von Strucker was a Nazi and was head of Hydra for a long time, but he co-opted Hydra from Japan. They were not white supremacists, as they were not all white–they were just “might makes right” style fascists, not tied to race or religion (other than weird alien cult religion stuff).
They premiered in Nick Fury comics from the 60s, as a rival spy agency. It was during the Cold War they debuted in comics, not WWII.
When did they start being accociated with the Nazis, then? I still think there’s enough of a connection between the Nazis and HYDRA in the minds of fans that an antisemitic reading is perfectly viable. And facism itself has a strong implication of being antisemitic and racist, just by the historical and cultural weight of the war. And cultural implications are everything in the realm of storytelling.
It seems like this mostly stems from the first Captain America movie. In the movie, in an effort to avoid using Nazis in a fun, family movie, they used Hydra. The goal was to avoid exactly what some people are accusing Marvel of right now–to not use the Holocaust and its perpetrators as cartoon villains in a bit of light entertainment. In that film, Hydra is thought to be a piece of the Nazi science division that went rogue. Even that, though, has been shown to be incorrect in Agents of SHIELD where Hydra is revealed to predate WWII by centuries. But more people know the Cap movie than know either the comic book history or agents of SHIELD, so that misconception remains.
Try the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition (1985), Jordan. In the HYDRA entry, The Red Skull sends Strucker to the Far East to build a power base. In Japan, Germany’s wartime ally, Strucker meets with a group Japanese businessmen who inform him that they are forming a secret society bent on world conquest. Strucker gets in on the ground floor and rapidly becomes the mastermind in the organization’s creation and rise to power, eventually overthrowing and slaying the first (Japanese) Supreme Hydra.
In the 21st century revision of the HYDRA entry, Strucker meets up with an already existing secret society within Japan’s underworld partly consisting of members of the Hand ninja cult. Strucker joins them and helps them choose the name HYDRA based on the Greek legends.
The 1985 entry also contains these words:
“Strucker conceived of HYDRA as a strongly ideological fascist organization heavily influenced by Nazi philosophy. HYDRA’S very name, a reference to Greek mythology, attests to the major role Strucker had in shaping the organization even before he became its leader. Its salute, “Hail HYDRA!”, is an obvious variation on “Heil Hitler!” The full form of the salute reflects the fascist near-religious idealization of and submission to the power of the state, or, in HYDRA’S case, the organization… . . In keeping with Nazism’s male supremacist ethic, HYDRA restricted its membership to men. Only decades later would Strucker’s HYDRA permit exceptions to this rule … .“
So, I have no idea how a generation of Marvel Comics fans got the crazy idea that HYDRA was a Nazi-offshoot organization. It’s a puzzlement.
