Baron Strucker

"Come on, guys, we're on the same side," Steve said helplessly.

"Hey! Captain, sign here!" A soldier in the audience suddenly stood up, turned around, pulled down his pants, and bared his ass.

Someone even produced several tomatoes from who knew where and hurled them at Steve onstage.

Steve raised his shield to block the flying tomatoes, then looked at the cheering soldiers below before walking off the stage with complicated feelings.

The next group to take the stage was a troupe of pretty girls in short skirts, who won thunderous applause and cheers from the audience. These American soldiers stationed at the front had not seen so many beautiful girls in a long time, and every one of them stared at the stage with shining eyes.

Seeing Steve come down with a dejected look on his face, the congressman's assistant backstage comforted him. "Don't worry. They'll like you."

The assistant's reassurance did little to ease Steve's mind. Though he had not made it onto the battlefield, Steve had always remembered that he was a soldier. Being mocked and attacked by his own comrades made him feel terrible.

Even the weather seemed affected by Steve's mood, and before long, it began to rain.

Steve sat alone beneath a shelter behind the temporary stage, sketching in a notebook with a pencil. Continuous raindrops fell onto the muddy ground before him alongside dull thunder, pattering softly, but they could not distract him at all.

"Hello, Steve." A gentle, magnetic female voice suddenly sounded behind him.

Steve, absorbed in his sketchbook, turned around and froze. It was the beautiful Agent Peggy Carter, whom he had not seen in a long time.

While Steve was catching up with Agent Carter after so long apart, a huge factory-like base thirty miles behind the Italian German Front was bustling with tense activity between two mountain ranges.

Numerous ragged prisoners worked at full capacity under the watch of heavily armed HYDRA soldiers. They constantly carried heavy machine parts and all kinds of supplies, every one of them exhausted to the bone.

Yet under the threats of the HYDRA soldiers, they had no choice but to grit their teeth and keep going. The slightest slackening would inevitably earn them a vicious beating.

In one corner of the enormous factory building lay stacks of finished products—enormous bombs!

Judging from their size alone, their power could not possibly be weak. With HYDRA technology behind them, leveling a small town would certainly not be a problem.

Standing beneath those gigantic bombs was a tall, bald man in a trench coat with a cold, sinister air. Beside him stood a middle-aged man dressed like an engineer, watching the bald man nervously.

"Baron Strucker, we're already working as fast as we can. The number of giant bombs you require is simply too great."

The middle-aged man carefully watched the expression of the bald man—Baron Strucker, as he had called him—and spoke cautiously.

"The Führer cannot wait much longer! Damn Schmidt! He suddenly transferred the construction plan for the Valkyrie Goddess from Alps Headquarters to my base, severely slowing its progress. The Führer has already urged me several times, ordering me to complete the Goddess on schedule and carry out the World-Ending Plan!"

At the mention of "Red Skull" Schmidt, Baron Strucker's bald face filled with hatred. Hitler had originally entrusted HYDRA to his management, but Schmidt had somehow won Hitler's trust and taken HYDRA from his hands. After that, Schmidt had continuously suppressed him, until he was forced to retreat into the Poland Base and completely lost control of HYDRA.

Outwardly, he obeyed Schmidt's leadership, but in secret, he had always sought an opportunity to reclaim HYDRA!

"Still, I should thank him. If he hadn't handed the plan over to me and then suddenly vanished for so long, I would never have had the chance to regain control of more than half the HYDRA bases and continue serving the Führer!"

"Schmidt never could have imagined that the World-Ending Plan he worked so hard to launch would become the key to the Führer's rule over the world! Who told him to disappear without a trace for so long? Did he really think he had HYDRA completely under his control? What arrogance!"

"HYDRA has always been the strongest sword in the Führer's hand. Schmidt merely stole it for a while. Now that he has loosened his grip, HYDRA has returned to the Führer's hands!"

To the bases Chen Mo had prepared to abandon, Schmidt had already been mysteriously missing for over half a year. They had originally been people loyal to Hitler or filled with ambition. Without Schmidt's suppression and threats, their rebellion under such circumstances had been inevitable.

Led by HYDRA's former leader, Baron Strucker, these bases once again threw themselves into Hitler's embrace. Whether it was out of loyalty to Hitler, ambition, or opportunism, no one could say for sure.

"Sch... Schmidt has been gone for so long. Could he be plotting something?" the person in charge of the base asked uneasily. Deep down, he still held an inerasable fear of Schmidt.

"So what if he is? Aside from Alps Headquarters and a few small bases hidden somewhere in deep mountains and dense forests, the strongest large bases are all under our control. Although that damned Strategic Scientific Reserve destroyed two bases near the front before, our strength is still far greater than what Schmidt has in his hands. The Weapon Factories are basically all in our possession. What can his little bases tucked away in mountain ravines possibly do?"

After being suppressed by Schmidt for years, Baron Strucker had long lost control of HYDRA. He knew even less about HYDRA's current true strength, especially the secret forces controlled by Schmidt, and could only make guesses based on the forces and intelligence they possessed.

What he did not know was that HYDRA had developed rapidly under Schmidt over the years, far beyond his imagination. What he saw and controlled was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Not to mention the Top-Secret Base under construction in Norway and Alps Headquarters, even the small bases hidden in deep mountains and dense forests that he dismissed so contemptuously possessed forces far exceeding those so-called large bases. How could Schmidt possibly reveal his true strength to such unstable elements, let alone place it in their hands?

Although the technological power they controlled was considerably stronger than that of the Allied Powers, it was all technology Schmidt had discarded. The truly core advanced technology and powerful weapons were firmly in Schmidt's hands.

This not only allowed him to maintain complete control over HYDRA, but also made Chen Mo's cleanup much more convenient.

Perhaps Schmidt himself had intended to carry out a purge as well, but before he could act, Chen Mo killed him and took his place.