Helmut Zemo (Earth 1) - Smallville Extended Universe

**Helmut Zemo** is a former Colonel with the Sokovian Armed Forces and the commander for their EKO Scorpion. Following the Battle of Sokovia, Zemo became the terrorist mastermind who sought his revenge against the Avengers after losing his family and became obsessed with destroying them. He is a member of HYDRA who operates as an assassin named Baron Zemo.

## Personality

Helmut Zemo was a member of a death squad of the Sokovian Armed Forces that managed to build a happy family despite the nature of his job. However, the war between the Avengers and Ultron resulted in the death of his whole family, and he became consumed with anger and hatred. Despite knowing the Avengers were not the villains of that war, Zemo nevertheless held them responsible. Without any means or resources to take the powerful group head-on, he wished to destroy the Avengers from the inside, ensuring that they are forever crippled, if not dismantled outright.

While he is a very vengeful man, he is actually more the ultimate personification of manipulation as he is able to carefully plan and execute all the steps required to manipulate the 'pieces' involved to do his bidding, whether if said 'pieces' realize it or not. His use of psychological warfare was so brilliant that he was able to compensate for previously unaccounted factors--including the death of T'Chaka and Black Panther joining the fray, and turn these seemingly rogue factors into a means to advance his plans.

## Powers and Abilities

### Abilities

* **Master Tactician**: Helmut Zemo, as the former intelligence officer and commander of the elite Sokovian paramilitary tactical unit EKO Scorpion, is a brilliant tactician, being able to mastermind a series of events in order to get his revenge against the Avengers for their role in the destruction of Sokovia and the death of his family. He was also smart enough to know that he had no hope of killing the Avengers, even if he had raised an army.
* **Multilingualism**: Zemo can speak his native Sokovian, as well as English, German, and Russian. He is good enough with English to fake a very convincing American accent.

* **Master Hacker**: After Black Widow released all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s and HYDRA's files on the Internet, Zemo was able to hack and decrypt the files pertaining to the Winter Soldier Program.
* **Combatant**: Zemo's extensive military and black ops background gave him an adequate degree of knowledge on close-quarters combat. While he's not as talented as Captain America or Black Panther, he was able to easily take down Vasily Karpov.
* **Expert Engineer**: Zemo was able to build an EMP bomb that was able to take out Berlin's power plant.

## Equipment

### Weapons

* **Smith & Wesson 6906**: Zemo took this weapon to Siberia while preparing an ambush on the Avengers, killing the Winter Soldiers with it and successfully manipulating Iron Man into attacking Captain America and the Winter Soldier in retaliation for the assassination of Stark's parents. With his personal mission completed, he went outside the facility to listen to his wife's latest voice message for the last time and attempted to use the handgun to commit suicide. However, Black Panther prevented him from killing himself in order to make Zemo pay for his crimes.
* **AK-103**: Members of EKO Scorpion, including Zemo, were issued these assault rifles as their standard weapon during operations, even appearing in photographs with the rifles.
* **Various Bombs**
	+ **Incendiary Device**: Zemo used the bomb to kill the attendees of the Vienna conference.
	+ **EMP**: Zemo used this to knock out the power to the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre Building in Berlin, Germany, allowing him to free the Winter Soldier without being seen or heard.

### Other Equipment

* **Winter Soldier Book**: Zemo stole this booklet from a house in Cleveland, Ohio after torturing and killing the house's sole resident, Vasily Karpov. The book contains all information about Winter Soldier Program, including several "trigger words" that Zemo used to activate the Winter Soldier's HYDRA-created thought patterns while Barnes was in custody in Berlin, causing him to then go on a furious rampage.