Doctor Arnim Zola was a Swiss-born scientist working for HYDRA before, during, and after World War II. Originally an employee of the Sturmabteilung, Zola was recruited in 1934 by Johann Schmidt to become a lead scientist for HYDRA. During the early days of World War II, Zola was assigned by Schmidt to study the Tesseract to build powered advanced weapons, which Schmidt intended to use in his quest for world domination. However, as the war came to an end, Captain America and the Howling Commandos tracked down Zola to his train, eventually succeeding in capturing him. Despite being captured by the Allies shortly before Schmidt's defeat in 1945, Zola was offered a position in S.H.I.E.L.D., the newly formed peacekeeping organization, as part of Operation Paperclip. However, Zola actually used his new position to secretly rebuild HYDRA from the shadows. Furthermore, thanks to his machinations during the war, Zola enabled Bucky Barnes to survive his apparent death while trying to capture him, leading Zola to recover Barnes and experiment on him, mechanically brainwashing Barnes into the HYDRA operative, as a part of Winter Soldier Program. Eventually, Zola received a fatal diagnosis in 1972 and passed away, but his mind was transferred into a complex computer system on Camp Lehigh, where he remained from that point onward, aiding his fellow HYDRA allies undetected. In 2014, however, when he was discovered by Captain America and Black Widow to still be active (albeit as an antique uncolored offline program), Zola stalled them by informing them about HYDRA's history and agenda before missiles sent by S.H.I.E.L.D. destroyed Camp Lehigh in an attempt to kill Rogers and Romanoff, causing Zola's "brain" to finally be destroyed.