Hydra is an organization that has been around for several millennia. Before its corruption, it was the Brotherhood of the Spear, the Eastern equivalent of the Brotherhood of the Shield.[4][3][1] The organization or some incarnation of it has existed in civilizations as varied as Pharaonic Egypt and Imperial China, and nation-states as different as Nazi Germany and the United States of America.[14][15][16] The latest reincarnation was created out of the remnants of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Its ideology has changed over the decades, but Hydra's methodology has consistently been one of supremacy and elitism.[17] Not only Hydra but Baron von Strucker himself has accepted into positions of leadership those the post-World War Two version of Hydra would have rejected in the first decade after the end of the war. Therefore they have recently been accepting not only Caucasians and Asians, but also recruits from other racial and ethnic groups and other groups, such as mutants, genetic experiments, and the undead.[18][2][19][20]