HYDRA

Hydra

Hydra is an organization that has been around for several millennia. Before its corruption, it was the Brotherhood of the Spear, the Eastern equivalent of the Brotherhood of the Shield. The organization or some incarnation of it has existed in civilizations as varied as Pharaonic Egypt and Imperial China, and nation-states as different as Nazi Germany and the United States of America. The latest reincarnation was created out of the remnants of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
Its ideology has changed over the decades, but Hydra's methodology has consistently been one of supremacy and elitism. Not only Hydra but Baron von Strucker himself has accepted into positions of leadership those the post-World War Two version of Hydra would have rejected in the first decade after the end of the war. Therefore they have recently been accepting not only Caucasians and Asians, but also recruits from other racial and ethnic groups and other groups, such as mutants, genetic experiments, and the undead.

History

Some time before 1941, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, leader of Nazi Thule Society, birthed the first modern incarnation of Hydra as his personal paramilitary force, with its very existence kept secret from Hitler's knowledge.

Their name came from the fearsome Lernean Hydra.

In 1941 Strucker was contacted by the cabal of ninjas known as the Hand, which had just broken a longtime agreement with the crime mastermind Romulus and wanted to form new alliances. In order to gain the Hand's loyalty, Strucker approached and captured young Russian operative Natalia Romanova, bringing her to Madripoor as a gift for the ninjas, who were trying to turn the girl into the cabal's Master Assassin. However Strucker was not aware that Natalia was secretly an agent of Romulus sent to kill the Jonin of the Hand, and while she was ready to accomplish her mission during the Master Assassin ritual, Logan, another agent of Romulus and Natalia's friend, interrupted the ceremony and killed the Jonin, seeking to avoiding making Natalia a killer again. Captain America and Ivan Petrovich helped Logan fight the Hand, while Strucker escaped in the battle's chaos.

Later in 1941, Strucker conducted a secret Hydra operation in Tunisia, using as a cover another Nazi operation on the same place. After Captain America, his sideckick Bucky and Logan entered into the Hydra headquarters and killed a Strucker impersonator, the real Strucker's location was discovered by Logan, who was ordered by Seraph, a Madripoor agent of Romulus, not to kill him due to new agreements between him and Romulus. Captured by the U.S. Army, Strucker was later freed by Logan and later rescued by his Nazi ally Baron Heinrich Zemo, arrived in Tunisia with support troops.

Some time before 1943, Nazi officer the Red Skull, observing how Hitler's Reich was falling in pieces, started creating a secret organization in Japan merging several underground criminal societies, including the Hand, with fugitive members of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The Red Skull then assigned leadership of this new joint organization based in the Pacific Ocean to a Shinto Imperialist.

When Hitler ordered Baron Strucker's death after his several failures, the Red Skull helped his fellow Nazi official to reach Japan, where he joined the Skull's organization, renamed it Hydra, and killed its Supreme Leader, seizing control of the organization. As the Supreme Hydra, Strucker created the Hydra Base Tsunami, better known as the Hydra Island.

Assisting the birth of Strucker's brand new Hydra, the new Jonin of the Hand tried to unify the two organizations introducing the occult arts and the worship of the Beast inside Hydra. Strucker, who knew that occultism had previously driven Hitler near to madness, fought the Jonin, winning the battle that would keep separated Hydra and the Hand for some time.

Hydra soon came in to conflict with Captain Simon Savage and the Leatherneck Raiders. The crew was captured, but they were able to fight their way to the base just in time to rescue their men from a firing squad, but they were all able to escape, with Hydra Island partially destroyed.

At some point, the Nazi Germany acquired the Spear of Imhotep, possibly from or with the help of the Japan Emperor, Hirohito. The Spear was at some point acquired by Baron von Strucker.

Strucker later decided to regain Hitler's favor, drugging Fury after having him captured in Africa, and offering Hitler the drug's formula. However, Fury was freed by the Howling Commandos. Strucker then returned in Germany, seemingly operating as a loyal Nazi but secretly leading Hydra behind the scenes. Hydra later obtained the Japanese submarine known as the Dragon of Death and used it as its new base of operations; Hydra later tried to build an atomic bomb by using knowledge from the future obtained by Strucker in a time-travel with Doctor Doom's Time Machine, but they were defeated by the Invaders.

Under Strucker's leadership, the Thule Society and Hydra started merging, quickly becoming the one and the same.

By 1944, Hydra had started recruiting S.S. officers into their ranks; a faction, led by Baron Zemo, was active in Paris after the liberation of France, in late 1944.

During the Cold War, Hydra kept on its activities, the Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Gang, the German People's Union, Der Republikaners and Neo-Nazis being some of their new faces in Germany, pursuing the goal of obtaining eternal life through science. The German Freedom League who had previously opposed the Thule Society kept fighting Hydra, smuggling scientists under duress from their organizations.

Hydra manipulated the rises of totalitarianism in China and North Korea to support their agenda.

Baron von Strucker acquired several hordes of Nazi gold, used to fund Hydra activities.

Satanist and fourth richest person in the world Elsbeth von Strucker married Baron Strucker and started funding Hydra in 1957, seemingly incorporating her own agenda about the Sickly Ones, entities having waited a chosen one for almost four billion years.

Strucker then reorganized and began to diversify Hydra, re-positioning the organization towards global domination.

Strucker and Baroness Adelicia von Krupp once captured the C.I.A.'s Agent Ten, Logan, but he was rescued by agents Richard Parker and Mary Parker.

Hydra then clashed with Fury's S.H.I.E.L.D. several times. Since Strucker did not want to expose himself, he found THEM, a secret council that oversaw Hydra and its subsidiaries, A.I.M. and Secret Empire, and became known as the Grand Imperator. THEM then selected a puppet leader for Hydra, Imperial Industries businessman Arnold Brown, who called himself the Imperial Hydra. Brown was later killed by an Hydra agent who refused to believe he was the organization's leader after having seen him unmasked.

During this time, Strucker and Dr. Nikolaus Geist secretly carried over the Infinitas Agenda, a program started during World War II by Strucker's Thule Society.

After Brown's death, Hydra's subsidiaries A.I.M. and Secret Empire became more active.

Hydra resurfaced some time later, led by a new Supreme Hydra, Don Antonio Caballero. Caballero later went undercover in S.H.I.E.L.D. under the identity of Agent Bronson. It was eventually revealed that Don Caballero was Baron von Strucker in disguise. Strucker finally died at the hands of Fury and several deceived Hydra agents.

The three Hydra subsidiaries, THEM, A.I.M. and the Secret Empire gained independence following Strucker's apparent death.

After having seen Hydra's decline with Werner von Strucker's leadership, the Red Skull sent three agents to resurrect the real Baron Wolfgang von Strucker using his Black Spore Virus in the former Hydra Island.[94] Successfully resurrected, Strucker immediately started to reorganize Hydra by killing the leaders of the several splinter cells and uniting them to create a brand new Hydra.[95] Later, Strucker and his newly recruited lieutenants assaulted New York City and destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters in Manhattan, killing 1500 agents in the act. Hydra lieutenants later ran an operation at Arctic Circle, but they were stopped by Fury's agents.

Hydra successfully placed three secret agents, dubbed the Super Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. into S.H.I.E.L.D., helped by a brainwashed G.W. Bridge. They were assigned to Nick Fury, who had to train them. They were unmasked as Hydra agents by Ivory,[101] who was then killed.

While investigating in the ruins of the destroyed S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters, Nick Fury discovered that the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents apparently killed and replaced by the LMDs during the Deltite Affair had not been killed, but kept in stasis in the underground sector of the HQ.[103] Those agents had been brainwashed into believing themselves to be Hydra agents; Jasper Sitwell, Jimmy Woo and Sidney Levine, impersonating the Executive Board, commanded Clay Quartermain to kill Nick Fury, but they were finally freed from Hydra's psychic control. During the final showdown between Strucker's Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D., Fury and his agents were brought to Hydrabase in Iceland. Fury and his allies defeated Hydra, Strucker escaped and agent Kate Neville was killed in the mission.

Later, a Skrull named Sn'Tlo took control of the New York's Hydra branch, calling himself the Sensational Hydra; he captured Captain America and impersonated him during the time Rogers was considered to be the perfect American citizen model, trying to destroy his reputation by faking a Skrull invasion. However, the real Captain escaped and revealed to the world the impostor's real identity.

Despite his reorganization of the group, various independent Hydra factions continued to operate and a Hydra Civil War would later result. While Baron Helmut Zemo had Strucker placed in stasis for his own ends, Gorgon and Strucker's wife Elsbeth mystically created a clone of Strucker who they set up to fail, allowing for a public execution of him.

At some point, legendary Hydra agent Kraken went (on his own) to Kobe, Japan, and gave the Godkiller blade to Tomi Shishido, aka the Gorgon, to help him achieve his destiny. Gorgon then went to the Hand and committed suicide (in order to be resurrected).

Gorgon became the High Priest of the Hand, their leader, and allied the Hand and the Brotherhood splinter group the Dawn of the White Light (that he formerly led as well) with Hydra.

Elsbeth von Strucker soon considered Gorgon as being the one awaited by the Sickly Ones.

As Gorgon left to follow their goals in leading Hydra, "ushering in the end with infinite resources", the sickly masters of the Hand erected a resurrected "Elektra" as a queen to rule from the East. Elektra, along with Wolverine, soon killed the masters and decimated the Hand's ranks.

When Edgar Lascombe took over as leader and under his command, Hydra planned an all out attack on the United States by smuggling missiles into New York for use in a planned bio-weapon assault on the Ogallala Aquifer. Lascombe know the reason why Hydra had failed so many times, was the lack of superpowers, so they formed a distraction using clones of the Avengers (Tactical Force instead of Iron Man, Militant as Captain America, Hammer as Thor and Bowman as Hawkeye, who was dead at the time) but were foiled when Spider-Man joined the Avengers' new line-up.

Moments in Hydra's History

• Hydra agents attacked the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm.
• The Fixer working with Hydra to kidnap the amnesiac Namor.
• Clashing with Interpol agents Cassidy and Patrick Lipton.
• Clashing with Mystique.
• A young Remy LeBeau destroying a Hydra ship.
• Silver Fox targeting Logan.
• Hydra administering Project: New Genesis.
• Ivan Trefkov, the murderer of Ernst Sablinova formed an alliance with Hydra at some point.

Current Affairs

A "new" Hydra was created by Hydra Queen along Baron Zemo, soldiers who where trapped in Land of Nowhere, soldiers form the "old" Hydra and new members, under the concept that the "old" Hydra failed at their commitment.

Captain America attacked Hydra's base and defeated the Hydra Queen and Codename: Bravo. Bravo died after a shot from the Hydra Queen ricocheted off Cap's shield and struck him while the Hydra Queen was put in a coma by Cap and placed in a S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital. Madame Hydra then resume leadership of Hydra once again.

At some point, Baron Zemo regained leadership of Hydra. Under Zemo, Hydra managed another massive infiltration, somehow also managing to infiltrate superhero teams. They also started to recruit new Inhumans after the Terrigen Mist cloud transformed humans with Inhuman ancestors. One of their recruits, a boy called Lucas, possessed a toxin in his blood that could sterilize human beings. Hydra immediately created an antidote and passed it to all it's members, then started systematically pumping Luca's blood to spread it across the world, thus effectively taking over the world within the next generation. Once they had enough blood, Zemo recruited a group of supervillains to release portions of Lucas' blood in various parts of the world in a way that it will hit major population points. But they were opposed by Sam Wilson, the new Captain America after Rogers was depowered, and Rogers' son Nomad. Wilson managed to stop all the villains from releasing the toxin, while both Nomad and Zemo apparently died after the latter set his base to self destruct. In reality, Zemo survived and was secretly placed by S.H.I.E.L.D. in their reality-altering prison known as Pleasant Hill. Madame Hydra was also captured during the ordeal, leaving Hydra without a leader.

Some time later, Wilson helped a hacktivist known as the Whisperer evade S.H.I.E.L.D. custody after leaking several confidential files. The Whisperer repaid Wilson with intel on Hydra, extracted directly from them. In the following six months, Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D. used the data to cripple the organization and leave it virtually non-existent.

Gorgon, Hydra's remaining figurehead, began a plot to wipe out Earth's superheroes in order to gain the credibility needed to re-unify the remnants of Hydra. He was eventually stopped and captured by S.H.I.E.L.D. and a team of heroes. Also, various independent Hydra cells have been shown to remain active despite the organization's lack of central leadership. They presumably operate independently from one another.

Later, the Red Skull reconstituted a new Hydra from the ground up, attracting various Neo-Nazi, white supremacist and fascist groups to his new cause, to change the world to the Skull's image. The Skull's Hydra returned back to operating under nazism, unlike the previous iterations of the modern Hydra. This new Hydra also resorted to more direct methods than in the past, recruiting political extremists, using guerrilla tactics and carrying out terrorist attacks against civilians in America and Western Europe.

Meanwhile, Elisa Sinclair reappeared as Madame Hydra after her past was altered by Kobik. She came to Tomi Shishido, offering him to restore his empire, the Spear in the East, by joining the new Hydra High Council, along with Zola, Faustus, the new Kraken, Hive, Viper, and the Red Skull.

Hydra Offshoots

Throughout its long history Hydra has created several subsidiaries and front companies, a few of which have splintered off into independent organizations that follow their own agendas. Hydra has been an extremely wealthy organization, one that had more cash than most nation-states had in their reserves. Prior to the recent global wide conflict between Hydra and Leviathan, Hydra had $900 billion which they were able to discreetly recover from various holdings, while the world was focused on the superhuman civil war in the United States.

• THEM - THEM was the central committee Baron von Strucker set up to direct operations of two of Hydra's subsidiaries: Advanced Idea Mechanics and the Secret Empire.[143][144] Perhaps THEM's most notable achievement was reviving the Red Skull from suspended animation.
  • Advanced Idea Mechanics - A.I.M. started as Hydra's science arm, outfitting their parent organization with advanced weaponry. A.I.M. is responsible for the development of the Cosmic Cube, and the creation of M.O.D.O.K.
  • Secret Empire - Started by a scientist that felt like an anonymous nobody, the Secret Empire was originally used by Hydra as a means of distraction. During their attempt at conquering the United States it was revealed that their leader, Number One was actually a high ranking member of the U.S. Government.
• Typhon Group - One of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, the Typhon Group is both a well-known provider of vaccines to third world countries and, quietly, the global leader in the creation of chemical weapons.
• Echidna Capital Management - Echidna Capital Management is a venture capital firm committed to funding (and through funding gaining a controlling stake in) businesses on the cutting edge of several key areas such as genetic engineering, new media, nanotechnology, next-generation military systems, and aerospace engineering & manufacturing.
• Merovech Investment Group - The Merovech Investment Group was founded and funded by Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. It was used as a cover to Hydra's activities in New York and to secretly fund Abe Jenkins' new Thunderbolts team.

People of Note

Hydra High Command

Supreme Hydra Wolfgang Von Strucker	Madame Hydra Elisa Sinclair	Kraken Daniel Whitehall	The Hive	Gorgon Tomi Shishido

Special Associates

Viper Ophelia Sarkissian	Kingpin Wilson Fisk	Baron Helmut Zemo

Section Commanders

Commander Kraken	Chancellor Cassandra	Colonel Gagarin	Director Richter	High Zero

Lieutenant Erik Saltz	Mother Of Pearl	Otto Vermis	Sebastian Fenhoff	Warlord Huang Zhu

Hydra Science Division

The Bio-Fanatic Arnim Zola	Doctor Locke	Doctor Erik Selvig	Doctor Faustus Johann Fennhoff	Brain Drain Werner Schmidt

Doctor Andrea Janson	Doctor Betty	The Necromancer

Hydra Special Agents

Agent 13	Jackhammer	Erlking	Bruiser	Codename: Bravo

Agent Gorgon	Crown	Dakini	Destructor	Guillotine

Roughouse	Salvo	Shocky Dan	Skeleton Ki	Wolfen

The Hydra Four Militant	The Hydra Four Tactical Force	The Hydra Four Hammer	The Hydra Four Bowman

Internal Affairs

Gotteskrieger Axl Nacht	Drain	Knockabout	Violence	Madame Worm

Rank and File Troops

Agent Halstan	Agent Bob Dobolina	Agent Cassandra Romulus	Agent Chuck Worthy	Agent Connelly

Agent Derek Bishop	Agent Frankie Noble	Agent Grant Ward	Agent Hank Johnson	Agent Horst Eisele

Agent James Harper	Agent Jared Kurtz	Agent M'Demwe	Agent Ms. Diaz	Agent Ms. Fischer

Uber Henchman Redshirt	Agent Ron Takimoto	Agent Vasily Karpov	Agent Zalman	Robot Warrior Dreadnought

Hydra Soldiers	Hydra Agents

Department Of Arcane

Emil Kreegan	Lord Quietus	Malphegor	Ogre	Pyre

Propaganda Division

Hydra Queen Grace	Social Media Veronica Eden	Hydra Chorist Choirmaster	Hydra Chorist Gretchen	Hydra Chorist Ryan Nelson

Hydra Youth

The Natural	Twister	Charade	R.J.

Trivia

• Hail Hydra!
• Secret Empire shoulda ended the instant Marvel remembered they have an active character who would take offense to the Nazis taking.. to Nazis, really, and his name is MAGNETO.