The creators of Captain America, two young Jewish artists named Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, were searching for the perfect villain, but why invent one when the real thing already existed? In early 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, the very first issue of Captain America Comics showed the star-spangled hero delivering the most important punch in comic book history: a defiant blow to Adolf Hitler. For Simon and Kirby, whose families had fled persecution in Europe, this was more than storytelling: it was a statement of moral courage at a time when many Americans still favored neutrality.
The comic electrified readers, enraged Nazi sympathizers, and became a defining moment in the Golden Age of comics, setting Marvel’s tone long before the MCU existed. Joe Parrott, a history professor at The Ohio State University, shares how two Jewish creators used art to confront rising fascism and why Captain America’s earliest issues became a cultural battlefront of World War II.