HYDRA prided itself on its ability to regroup and rebuild itself, allegedly mightier than before, after any defeat. Indeed, the organization endured for over four decades, and has recently rebuilt itself yet again. During that time, HYDRA underwent considerable structural and sociological changes, so that to many, HYDRA bears only a superficial resemblance to the organization in its heyday. HYDRA has always been (and has been most successful as) an instrument of the infamous Baron Wolfgang Von Strucker, the last in a long line of Prussian noble men with impeccable military backgrounds. Strucker was recruited into the Nazi intelligence service during the 1930s, and was one of Nazi Germany’s most successful intelligence operatives during World War II. He rose to become the commander of Germany’s Death Head Squadron, an elite military unit; which Hitler gave a special target.

That target was the famous Howling Commandos squad of the United States Army, led by Sergeant Nick Fury. The Commandos had handed Germany numerous defeats, and Hitler ordered Strucker not just to defeat Fury, but to humiliate him. The arrogant Strucker was all too happy to oblige, challenging Fury to personal combat on the island of Norsehaven in the English Channel. Fury violated orders to accept the challenge. Before their duel, Strucker had Fury drunk a toast; Fury’s drink was drugged, and Strucker won the duel. Still photographs and films of Fury’s defeat circulated widely around Germany, giving the Nazis a major propaganda victory.

Shortly thereafter, the Howling Commandos encountered Strucker again, and Fury challenged him to another fight. Strucker coolly accepted and proposed a toast, but one of the Commandos, Dino Manelli, warned Fury that the drink was probably drugged. The angry Fury refused to drink and easily defeated Strucker in a hand-to-hand fight. Commando Timothy “Dum-Dum” Dugan took photographs of Fury’s triumph, which were widely circulated.

Strucker and Fury clashed many times over the next few years, with Fury victorious on most occasions. At one point during the war, Strucker was in the village of Gruenstadt when the villagers reported the presence of strange beings. Strucker investigated and discovered a colony of Gnobians, a race of peaceful alien telepaths. Strucker saw these aliens as an opportunity for fantastic knowledge and power. Fearful that the villagers would reveal the aliens’ existence to others, Strucker had the entire population of Gruenstadt executed. Immediately thereafter, Sergeant Fury and the Howling Commandos arrived on the scene and killed the Death’s Head Commandos. Strucker himself was mortally wounded, but crawled back to the Gnobian enclave, where he was healed of his wounds and stole several examples of the Gnobian technology. This contact with the Baron tainted the Gnobians’ minds, and led to their eventual suicide. Finally, enraged over Strucker’s many defeats, Hitler ordered Strucker to go to Cherbeaux in occupied France and, if the Resistance agents refused to give themselves up, to execute every citizen in the town. Fury confronted Strucker once again and made a deal with him: Fury would fight Strucker again if Strucker evacuated Cherbeaux before Hitler had it destroyed. Strucker agreed, but his battle with Fury ended in a stalemate, and the two became separated. When Hitler learned that Strucker had evacuated the citizens of Cherbeaux, he flew into a rage and ordered the Gestapo to find and assassinate Strucker.

Strucker would have had little chance of escaping, except for the intervention of the Red Skull. The Skull intended to supplant Hitler eventually, or to achieve world domination himself, if Hitler lost the war. To achieve these ends, the Skull assigned Strucker to create a power base in the Far East for him. Then, with the aid of the Skull’s agents and some loyal men of his own, Strucker was able to escape. However, Strucker saw no reason to follow the Skull; once he got to Japan, he severed all ties with him. Strucker made contact with Japanese subversives who informed him that they were forming a secret society bent on world conquest. Strucker became the mastermind behind this society’s rapid rise to power: a secret society known as HYDRA. When he had built HYDRA’s army and arsenal to what he thought was maximum strength, Strucker slew the Supreme HYDRA and took his place.

Strucker conceived of HYDRA as a strongly ideological fascist organization heavily influenced by Nazi philosophy. The full form of its salute reflects the fascist near-religious idealization of submission to the power to the state, or in HYDRA’s case, the organization. Its motto also has heavily fascist overtones: “Hail HYDRA! Immortal HYDRA! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one limb and two shall take its place! We serve the Supreme HYDRA, as the world shall soon serve us!” In keeping with Nazism’s male supremacist ethic, HYDRA restricted its membership to white males. Only decades later did it permit exceptions, most notably Laura Brown, daughter of Imperial HYDRA Arnold Brown, and the first Madame Hydra, later known as the Viper. Strucker created a cult of personality about himself as the Supreme HYDRA similar to that of Hitler in Germany. There was a heavy ideological emphasis on the anonymity of other HYDRA agents, who generally remained masked and who were addressed as numbers instead of names.

While building HYDRA’s arsenal, Strucker had also recruited a staff of brilliant scientists, who would later become the core of the high technology HYDRA branch known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM. HYDRA was close to obtaining nuclear weaponry, and thus achieving the means to conquer Earth, when its Pacific base, Hydra Island, was invaded by Captain Simon Savage’s U.S. Marine Commandos and their Japanese counterparts, the so-called Samurai Squad. Hydra Island was destroyed, but Strucker escaped.

Following the war, Strucker moved HYDRA’s principle base to America and created a new central committee, code-named THEM, within HYDRA which would supervise the activities of HYDRA and its rapidly developing sister organizations. Strucker made himself the chief, the Grand Imperator of THEM, while keeping his true identity disguised through the use of epiderm-masks. Few people knew of the existence of the Grand Imperator; fewer still knew that it was Baron Strucker.

THEM appointed Arnold Brown, executive secretary to Leslie Farrington, one of the directors of Imperial Industries International, to be the Imperial HYDRA. Brown’s principal utility to HYDRA was in draining resources for HYDRA from Imperial Industries International and managing HYDRA’s day-to-day operations. Ultimate power remained in Strucker’s hands, but under Brown’s leadership, HYDRA developed an arsenal of weaponry, submarines, and fighter aircraft greater than that of most nations. The armies and agents of HYDRA ranged worldwide, striking at all world powers.

To meet the threat of HYDRA, SHIELD (Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division) was created. HYDRA assassinated SHIELD’s first Public Director, who was replaced by Colonel Nicholas Fury of the CIA, Strucker’s greatest foe. Soon after, HYDRA attempted to blackmail the world with the Betatron Bomb, which could release lethal radiation upon the Earth. When inventor Anthony Stark de activated the bomb, Fury captured HYDRA’s New York City headquarters. Brown was murdered by his own men, who seemingly failed to recognize him without his costume.

Immediately after Brown’s defeat, THEM used AIM and the original Secret Empire for subversive actions against SHIELD and the United States government while HYDRA rebuilt its strength. Strucker abolished THEM by reasserting himself as Supreme HYDRA and incorporating the other members of THEM into HYDRA’s new central committee. Strucker launched the Overkill Horn, which would have set off every nuclear explosive on Earth (while leaving HYDRA safe in special shelters). Once again, they were thwarted in this scheme by SHIELD.

Impersonating captured SHIELD agent John Bronson, Strucker smuggled the so-called Death Spore bomb aboard SHIELD heli-carrier headquarters. When the bomb exploded, it would destroy the heli-carrier and release deadly spores which would be carried by air currents across the face of the planet. By now, Strucker had built a new HYDRA island, a synthetic atoll on the site of the original. Here was gathered HYDRA’s leadership and elite guard, since the new fortress’s impenetrable dome would provide a shield from the effects of the Death-Spore bomb. In a telecast from the island, Strucker demanded that the world surrender to them, for only those nations surrendering would be given access to the antidote.

However, Fury found the Death-Spore bomb on the heli-carrier and singly invaded HYDRA island, planting the Death-Spore bomb there. Fury and Strucker confronted one another yet again. Fury won the battle and used the epiderm-mask making machine to make masks of Strucker and himself. The HYDRA agents arrived just in time to see Strucker battling Strucker. Fury pulled off a Strucker mask, which he had placed over a Nick Fury mask. Believing Strucker to be Fury, the agents fired on him, Strucker fled in panic through the nearest doorway. That doorway led to a nuclear reactor chamber; Strucker was killed.

Fury fled the island before the Death-Spore bomb detonated, which was triggered by the unsuspecting Strucker, virtually sinking the island. The dome prevented any of the spores from escaping into the outside world; all of the HYDRA agents were killed. This dealt a great blow to HYDRA, which fragmented into warring factions. AIM, the scientific branch of the organization, seceded from HYDRA, and the Secret Empire was later revived independently of HYDRA.

The remnant of HYDRA in New York City was led first by Madame Hydra, and later by the Grim Reaper and the Space Phantom. A Western European faction was led by Count Otto Vermis. Another HYDRA remnant, located in Las Vegas, was controlled by Strucker’s old colleague, the Red Skull. An at tempt by the Maggia Crime Boss, Silvio “Silvermane” Manfredi, was a brief success, but eventually was stopped by Fury and SHIELD.

HYDRA was later reorganized under radically different lines by a new agency. Although it had worldwide influence, it seemed more centered in the United States than before, and although it was dedicated to world domination, it had abandoned the traditional fascist ideology entirely. The only clear link between the new HYDRA and Strucker’s HYDRA was that the new organization’s members dressed in traditional HYDRA costumes. Women and minorities were now allowed into the organization in large numbers and could hold important positions in it. Indeed, the position of Madame Hydra became some thing of a tradition. Agents were often addressed by their real names, and minor HYDRA officials often appeared un masked before their colleagues and subordinates in their organization. And now, only the middle and upper levels of authority paid homage to the Supreme HYDRA. HYDRA was organized along the lines of a major corporation, including salaries and medical benefits.

However, even in death, Strucker had one last trump card to play. He had infiltrated SHIELD’s LMD (Life Model Decoy) program and impregnated one of them with his own DNA and instructions. The clone Strucker began replacing SHIELD agents, as well as its board of directors, with LMDs (“Deltites”). Eventually, Fury brought down the Deltite conspiracy, but not before irreparable damage was done to SHIELD as a functional agency.

HYDRA remained, at best, a minor menace during the following years. A branch of HYDRA in the Orient, led by the Yellow Claw, did achieve some prominence, but only a shadow of its former “glories.”

HYDRA’s latest ascendancy occurred because of the return of its original leader. Strucker would have remained dead, but for his old ally the Red Skull, who gave several original HYDRA agents keys and charts to HYDRA Island, now sunk. There, the agents successfully penetrated the chamber where Baron Strucker had been killed, and mutated the Death Spore virus that lay on Strucker’s corpse to mimic his DNA, and restored his life functions and memories. Baron Strucker rose from the dead.

Strucker began to take over the fractured remnants of HYDRA. He easily took control of the Las Vegas HYDRA, killing those who would not follow him. He infiltrated AIM, and destroyed them at an AIM sales convention, transferring their funds and inventories to his service. He aided in the downfall of Wilson Fisk, also known as the Kingpin. Then Strucker began to implement his plan of vengeance against the new SHIELD.

Strucker recruited lieutenants of varying skills: Romulus, Garotte, Saltz, and Guillotine. Romulus and Garotte killed SHIELD recruit David Purcell and replaced him with an LMD with an implanted explosive. HYDRA then detonated the LMD, killing 1500 SHIELD recruits at their commencement ceremony in New York City, bringing HYDRA back to world prominence.

Strucker’s next goal was to obtain nuclear weapons. The Red Skull gave him the coordinates of a Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker which had sunk, and Strucker sent his lieutenants to recover the nuclear fuel. But, thanks to SHIELD and Wolverine, the lieutenants failed to get the nuclear fuel they sought, and Guillotine was killed.

In spite of the failure (so far) of HYDRA to get nuclear weapons, HYDRA is once again on the upswing. Arguably, they have never been as efficient or effective as they are now. And, given the cut backs in SHIELD support, it will require a truly heroic effort to bring them down once again.