HYDRA

**HYDRA** is a worldwide subversive organization dedicated to global domination. Whenever the organization reaches its height of power, HYDRA ascends to the most extensive, powerful, and dangerous organization in history.

## History

### Earliest Origins

Long before the coming of man, a cabal of immortal reptilian aliens arrived on Earth with a plan to start a legacy of evil and darkness. Several millennia later, their presence led to a cult known as the **Thule Society** which originated from Asia, whom worshipped the aliens as gods and viewed themselves as instruments of their will. The corrupted cult spread out across the planet, ingraining itself like a multi-headed serpent into all facets of Human society, from science to magic and politics. As time wore on, the organization's name changed depending on the culture and customs of the era.

### Branding of HYDRA

By the time of the second World Wars conclusion, the ideals of the Thule Society had been absorbed into a break off section of the Nazi party which would come to be known as **HYDRA**. One of the Nazi members, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, quickly seized control of the organization and restructured it to be dedicated to world domination through terrorist and subversive activities on various fronts, resulting in a neo-fascist New World Order. To this end, Baron Strucker used his personal fortune, based on his recovered hoard of Nazi plunder from World War II, and funds established by the original leaders of the Japanese secret society that became part of the old HYDRA. However, after Strucker's death, the organization began to lose sufficient funding to finance its endeavors. To correct this error, HYDRA began to integrate itself into a variety of different organizations such as the **Department of Domestic Security and Defense** or the Essex Corporation, and offer its services to high paying individuals such as Ichirō Yashida or William Stryker.

### New Leadership

In the aftermath of the Secret Invasion and Baron Strucker's second death, there followed a series of power struggles which eventually left Hydra without a formal leader.[8] The splintering of Hydra accelerated, with various cells operating seemingly independently.[9][10][11] Eventually, the Red Skull, returning to his Nazi beliefs, started building a new Hydra from the ground up. However, this brought him into conflict with Baron Zemo, who was trying to control what was left of the old Hydra.[12][13]

The Red Skull convinced his now aware Cosmic Cube, Kobik, to cooperate with S.H.I.E.L.D. in creating Pleasant Hill and discovered that Kobik could alter people's memories to make them believe they had been members of the Hydra of which the Red Skull had told them stories.[14] However, the Red Skull failed to realize that the Hydra he was building and the Hydra Kobik had created false memories of were two different things, with the now Hydra Captain America disobeying the Red Skull and planning something.[13]

### TO BE EDITED

A cabal of Japanese ultranationalists planned to use Hydra to overthrow the Japanese liberal democratic government, assassinate the prime minister, and install a neo-militarist government, which would re-arm Japan. However, after joining Hydra, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker seizes control of the organization and constructs the Hydra base Tsunami - called Hydra Island.[6] The original Hydra Island was invaded by the Leatherneck Raiders and the Japanese Samurai Squad, and the base was destroyed.[15] Strucker slowly steered the organization towards the goal of world domination. That campaign brought him into conflict with Charles Xavier and the future Magneto among others, and once Hydra became more brazenly public in its operations, eventually led to the creation of the original agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D. specifically to counter Hydra's threat to world security. After Hydra apparently assassinated S.H.I.E.L.D.'s first executive director, Nick Fury was appointed as executive director. Hydra agents attempted to assassinate Nick Fury before his appointment as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Director, but failed.[16]

This decision, after several Hydra campaigns including the failure of the world blackmail attempt using the Betatron Bomb, the creation of the Overkill Horn (designed to detonate all nuclear explosives worldwide), and the bio-engineered "Death-Spore" Bomb, led directly to von Strucker's first death at the hands of Fury and several deceived Hydra operatives. In the wake of von Strucker's first death, the surviving elements of Hydra broke into factions that each adopted its own reorganized modus operandi. Several of these factions developed "super-agents" that would occasionally break away in turn to become freelance operatives, or, in some rarer cases, superheroes such as the first Spider-Woman. During this era, their collective threat was mitigated by not only occasionally fighting among themselves, but their operating policy of punishing failure with death often meant they were killing each other more often than their intended victims after their frequent defeats by SHIELD, superheroes and even civilians like the motorcycle racing team, Team America. Von Strucker was eventually revived and reunited several of the Hydra factions under his leadership to renew his campaign against S.H.I.E.L.D. and humanity for several more years.

Despite his reorganization of the group, various independent Hydra factions continue to operate around the Marvel Universe, 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 second wife Elsbeth von Strucker mystically created a clone of Strucker who they set up to fail, allowing for a public execution of him, after which—as part of an alliance with The Hand, they utilized an army of brainwashed superheroes and supervillains, including Northstar and Elektra to launch a massive assault on S.H.I.E.L.D. The assault was ultimately repelled and Wolverine would kill Gorgon.

Hydra later 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. They formed a distraction through using a team that had the duplicated powers of several Avengers (Iron Man, Captain America and former Avengers Thor and Hawkeye) but were inevitably foiled by Spider-Man and the other New Avengers.