 In the present day, researchers in the Arctic Circle uncover the buried wreckage of a large, wing-shaped aircraft. While investigating the aircraft's interior, two of the researchers discover a frozen, circular object with a red, white and blue encased in ice. In March 1942, Hydra forces led by Johann Schmidt, invade a stone church in Norway. Seeking a mysterious cosmic artifact known as the Tesseract, which possesses untold powers. Upon discovering the true Tesseract, Schmidt has the churchkeeper who guarded it killed, along with everyone else in the village. At a recruiting station in Brooklyn, Steve Rogers, a 20-something, 90 pounds, 5-foot-tall asthmatic eagerly awaits the opportunity to enlist in the United States Army. The Army doctor gives a once-over to Steve's medical file, which reads like that of a 90-year-old man, and rejects Steve's application as the military 4F, as this is his fourth failed attempt to enlist. Depressed Steve goes to a warfare with his friend, Bucky Barnes. He watches as playboy inventor Howard Stark unsuccessfully demonstrates a flying car. Steve breaks away from the group and goes to another recruiting station. Bucky catches up with him and asks how Steve intends to forge his application this time. Unbeknownst to them both, Dr. Abraham Erskine, while passing by eavesdrops on their conversation. He is fascinated by the gumption of Steve. Bucky wishes Steve good luck on his latest application and Steve heads into the recruiting station for his fifth physical. Inside Steve sits on an examination table and grows nervous when Dr. Erskine enters the room. Dr. Erskine has all of Steve's prior applications on file. Concerned by Steve's failed applications, Erskine tests his character by asking if his insistence on applying for military services driven purely by a desire to kill Nazis. The young man sincerely reveals that he is not a killer at heart, but does not like bullies regardless of their origin. He also shows little concern when Erskine reveals that he is German by birth. Won over by Steve's strong will and unwavering conviction. Erkine enlists Rodgers as a candidate of project rebirth, a super soldier experiment being conducted by the Strategic Scientific Reserve under the supervision of Erskine, Chester Phillips, and Peggy Carter. During his basic training, Phillips is unconvinced by Erskine's claims that Rodgers is the right person for the procedure, but relents after seeing Rodgers commit an act of self-sacrificing bravery. The night before the treatment, Erskine reveals to Rodgers that Schmidt underwent an imperfect version of the procedure and suffered negative side effects due to his inner ambition for power and obsession with becoming a superior man. However, he reassures Rodgers that he chose him because he believed Rodgers was an inherently good man and won that, because he had been weak his whole life, would not lose respect for the strength he would gain. In a secret military installation high in the Alps, Johann Schmidt brings the glowing cube to Dr. Zola. His hydro-weapon specialist. The cube's seemingly limitless power enables Schmidt and Dr. Zola to power unstoppable energy guns and cannons. Intending to use the power to fuel Zola's inventions. Meanwhile, Schmidt, having discovered Erskine's location, dispatches an assassin to kill him. Peggy and Steve enter the antique shop, and exchange passcodes with an old woman manning the register, and descend into a secret military bunker concealed within. Peggy leads Steve to the heart of the bunker where they find Dr. Erskine preparing a medical capsule along with Howard Stark, and Colonel Phillips rubbing elbows with senators and dignitaries. Steve is told to remove his shirt and sit in the capsule. Stark describes that the procedure will first mean injecting muscle regenerators into Rodgers' major muscle groups which will then be bombarded with Vita rays. Erskine has made no secret of the pain Steve will endure but promises he'll come out stronger. Carter bids Steve good luck and joins Phillips in the overhead viewing chamber. Erskine's serum is injected into Steve's muscles and Steve is enclosed within the Vita ray capsule. The capsule glows brightly, Steve yells in pain but also tells them to continue and the procedure is quickly completed. When the capsule is shut down, Steve comes out a foot taller and 100 pounds heavier with solid muscle, which is just the most superficial aspects of his body artificially raised to the maximum human potential. Everybody, including Phillips, celebrates the success of the procedure, and descends from the viewing chamber to congratulate Erskine. After witnessing the success of the experiment, one of the attendees reveals himself to be Schmidt's assassin, Heinz Kruger. The assassin stays behind, placing a small satchel on a chair. Moments later the viewing gallery explodes. Kruger descends the stairs and fatally shoots Dr. Erskine, killing him. Kruger grabs the last vial of the super soldier's serum and escapes the facility into the streets of New York. Rodgers runs after Kruger, using his new strength and stamina to run down Kruger's car on foot. Despite attempting to escape in a submarine, Rodgers manages to catch Kruger, but the vial of super soldier's serum is broken in the process and the assassin immediately commits suicide by cyanide pill before he can be interrogated for information. With Erskine dead and the super soldier formula lost, the SSR is ordered to join the war and engage Hydra directly. However, Phillips decides to leave Rodgers behind and allow scientists to study him in an attempt to rediscover Erskine's formula. Senator Bran approaches Rodgers and instead offers him the chance to tour the nation for the USO to promote war donations, using his image as the strong, ideal soldier as a symbol for the public to rally behind, which Rodgers accepts. During his work for the USO Rodgers' perform in scripted stage shows as the star-spangled character Captain America. As Rodgers continues touring across the country Captain America gains great popularity among the public, leading to increasingly more elaborate shows as well as making appearances in film strips, comic books, and other memorabilia. Although Rodgers is happy to be contributing towards the war effort, he grows increasing weary of being paraded around while not being able to have a more direct role alongside those actively fighting. Meanwhile, Schmidt unveils his new Tesseract-powered weaponry to three Nazi officers sent to oversee his operation. They ridicule Schmidt, saying that the Nazi party no longer takes him and Hydra seriously due to his obsession with magic and the occult and playfully refer to him as the Red Skull. A name that infuriates Schmidt. Schmidt takes the three to his weapons lab where they are shown his unstoppable energy weapons and a strategic map of Europe dotted with targets. One of the three notices a target hovering over Berlin and confronts Schmidt. Schmidt quickly vaporizes the three Nazi officers. Schmidt announces that Hydra has disbanded from the Nazi party and is now enemies with the world. Schmidt uses this moment to declare his secession from the Third Reich, claiming that Hydra could grow no further in Adolf Hitler's shadow and will now follow his agenda. Hydra continued to siphon energy from the Tesseract, using the stored energy to create a variety of weapons and integrated it into a range of vehicles and other technology, quickly giving the faction the potential to become a major threat to the war front and the world at large. In November 1943, while performing for active servicemen as well as encountering his colleagues from the SSR, Rodgers learns that Barn's unit was lost in a battle against Hydra. Despite Phillip's insistence on the futility of the situation, Rodgers refuses to believe that Barn's is dead and becomes determined to mount a solo rescue attempt, receiving help from Carter and Howard Stark, who flies them both over the battlefield in his private plane. Steve surmises that Stark and Carter have a relationship and bashfully withholds his feelings for her. Just as anti-aircraft guns from Hydra begin firing on Stark's plane, Steve parachutes in, while the other two escape back to safety. Steve stealthily makes his way into the Hydra base, taking out numerous guards in the process. Rodgers manages to sneak into Hydra's main factory where he finds and frees most of the captive soldiers who begin a riot and start escaping while Rodgers continues on to find Barn's. Steve makes his way through the facility and happens across Bucky, who is tied down to an operating table, and has quite obviously been tortured. Steve also notices an oversized tactical map mounted on the wall, with various marked installations. Steve frees Bucky, who is surprised to see that Steve is taller than him, and commits the map to memory. Schmidt, seeing the prisoners escaping and Rodgers moving through the facility, sets the factory to self-destruct to cover Hydra's operations and evacuate to another facility. As the building begins to detonate, Schmidt confronts Rodgers on a high catwalk where he makes light of his similarities to Rodgers following their mutual use of the super-soldier serum. Schmidt expresses his belief that they have risen above the visage of normal humans before revealing his face to be a mask, removing it to display the red skull-like face that earned him the sobriquet the red skull. The red skull escapes the exploding facility in a strangely designed private plane, while Zola sneaks away in Schmidt's roadster. Steve and Bucky have a huge divide to cross to their freedom. Bucky crosses a trembling, buckling support beam and manages to cross to safety moments before the beam plummets into the fire below. Left with no other option, Steve backs up as far as he can and leaps over the burning chasm. Rodgers leads barns to the roof where they both barely manage to escape the factory themselves before regrouping with the escaped soldiers and marching back to base. Following the liberation of the Allied prisoners, Rodgers gains his superior officer's respect and acknowledgement as a soldier in his given high rank and the chance to fight as Captain America, as a key figure on the war-front opposing Hydra directly. The news of Captain America's success on the battlefield has swept over the world, but Rodgers does not appear for his medal from Congress. The reason for that absence is in London, where Steve gives Phillips and Carter his best recollection of the Hydra base map and tells them that he intends to go to those bases and destroy them one by one, and wishes to recruit a team of men made up of those he liberated in Italy. Steve meets the howling commandos in a bar and they eagerly accept the offer. While there all the men are surprised as Peggy enters dressed in a form-fitting cocktail dress. She ignores all the men, including Bucky, and flirts with Steve, telling him that she'd love to have a dance with him some day. Howard Stark outfits Rodgers with advanced equipment, including a durable, custom combat uniform and a circular shield which is made of a metal called Vibranium, which is lighter than steel and is vibration-resistant and will absorb heavy impacts. For the next two years, Rodgers and his howling commandos lead a strong offensive, sabotaging various Hydra operations, much to Schmidt's frustration. In 1945, the team later assaults a train carrying Zola. Rodgers and Barnes engage in a fight with the soldiers on the train, during which Barnes falls from the train into an icy river below to his apparent death, while the soldier locates Zola on the train and captures him. Rodgers is deeply affected by the loss of his best friend and is convinced by Carter to use his sorrow as motivation to put an end to Hydra for good. Using information extracted from Zola, the final Hydra stronghold is located and Rodgers leads an attack to stop Schmidt from using weapons of mass destruction on the United States. Rodgers and his team prepare a battle plan to take down Red Skull at his headquarters. Rodgers, dressed in a new uniform, mounts a Harley and charges the base. He easily dodges Hydra soldiers and tanks and finds himself within the base, surrounded by a Hydra army. He is taken into custody and led to the Red Skull's private weapons lab. Red Skull asks what makes Steve so special. Moments before members of his team zipline into Red Skull's office. A climatic firefight ensues, as hundreds of soldiers under the direction of Phillips and Carter storm the base, killing many Hydra soldiers. Red Skull flees to his private hangar, in which a gigantic flying wing, Hydra's massive aircraft bomber powered by the Tesseract, is preparing for takeoff. Rodgers climbs aboard the Valkyrie, as it takes off. He sneaks into the craft where he finds dozens of plane missiles, each labeled with a different major American city. Inside the large cockpit, Captain America and Red Skull have a fisticuffs battle. Red Skull fires his cube energy pistol at Steve who easily deflects the shots using a shield. A shot is deflected into one of the cockpit center consoles which contains the Tesseract. Schmidt physically handles the Tesseract, which opens a wormhole into space, sucking him into it in bright light. The cube falls to the floor, burning through the plane and falling into the ocean. Seeing no way to land the plane without the risk of detonating its weapons. Rodgers instead crashes it on the Arctic shelf while making a sorrowful goodbye to Carter, making a promise to take her dancing, knowing he would never be able to make the date. Stark later recovers the Tesseract from the ocean floor but is unable to locate Rodgers body or Schmidt's aircraft. Rodgers awakens in a 1940s style hospital room. Deducing from an anachronistic radio broadcast that he was out of place, he flees outside into what is revealed to be present-day Times Square, where Nick Fury tells him he has been asleep for nearly 70 years. Stunned by this revelation, Rodgers only responds is that he had a date. A year later, Fury approaches Rodgers, proposing a mission with worldwide ramifications.