Captain America’s Life Was Saved By His Own Worst Enemy

Very few feuds in the Marvel Universe are as bitter as the one between the Sentinel of Freedom, Captain America, and the Nazi villain, the Red Skull. The two have been fighting without quarter since World War II, and they represent polar opposite values. However, in one story, when Captain America was about to die due to the side effects of his own Super Soldier Serum, it was the Red Skull who saved his life.

The origins of the Red Skull are closely tied with those of Captain America. As a Nazi special agent, Johann Schmidt was in charge of sabotage and subversion in the United States before they entered the war. The U.S. Government sponsored the Super Soldier project because it needed a “special agent” of its own to counter these subversive activities, and so Captain America was born. Steve Rogers foiled Schmidt’s plans in the States, and later they met many times during the war. In the final days of the conflict, Cap and the Red Skull fought in Berlin and after an explosion Schmidt was buried underground and put into suspended animation after inhaling an experimental gas. Once again the stories of the two enemies mirrored each other, as Rogers would also end up in suspended animation shortly after.

The Red Skull and Captain America both emerged in the post-war world, the first one joining the terrorist organization HYDRA and the second the heroic Avengers. The two clashed many times in the modern age as their destinies seemed inevitably entangled. When Schmidt died due to the aftereffects of the gas he inhaled at the end of the war, Arnim Zola preserved his mind and downloaded it into a clone of Steve Rogers’ body. Thus, the Red Skull had the body of the original Super Soldier, which made him an even greater danger, but it would also prove to be fundamental to saving Captain America’s life. When Rogers is involved in the explosion of a meth lab, the chemical substances interact with his Super Soldier Serum, poisoning his body and deteriorating his health. The Avengers try everything they can to save him, but in the end there is nothing left to do and Cap apparently dies in Captain America vol. 1 #444 by Mark Waid, Ron Garney, and Jon Kalisz.

In truth, his body mysteriously disappears from the Avengers Mansion. In the following issue, Captain America wakes up in a lab, where a total body fluids transfusion has been performed on him, saving his life. To his dismay, Rogers finds out that the transfusion came from the Red Skull, who is the only one who could save him due having his cloned body. Schmidt wants Cap’s help to fight the Kubekult, a faction of neo-nazis and AIM members that have stoles his ornamental Cosmic Cube containing Hitler’s soul. During the fight, Captain America saves the Skull’s life, which he considers enough to repay him for the transfusion, but the truth is that without the help of his worst enemy, Steve Rogers would have died long before his famous assassination at the end of Civil War.

The alliance between Captain America and the Red Skull is obviously short-lived and the two quickly go back to being hated enemies. What really stands out about this story is that despite representing opposite values, Rogers and Schmidt’s lives seem to be interconnected and mirror each other. They both went into suspended animation, both were almost killed by the side-effects of the substances that kept them alive, and both were saved by the other’s body. While Captain America certainly doesn’t like to think about that moment, he will always remember that his life was saved by his worst enemy, the Red Skull.

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