Karl Ruprecht Kroenen

Herr Doktor: Karl Ruprecht Kroenen-Hitler's top assassin, member of the Schutzstaffel, and head of the Thule Occult Sociaty.

Karl Ruprecht Kroenen was born in Munich, Germany in 1897. A musical prodigy with angelic features and blonde hair, young Kroenen toured the capitals of Europe singing opera until his voice deepened with the onset of puberty, thereby ending his career. From a very early age, he demonstrated symptoms of masochism, whipping himself with a fresh branch of oak each day, and finding pleasure in the pain.

As a teenager, he loathed his awkwardness and may have developed an extreme form of body dysmorphic disorder. He conducted a series of brutal experiments due to his surgical addiction, in which he surgically removed his own eyelids and lips. He later designed a tight-fitting gas mask to filter out germs and hide his disfigured face.

In 1930, he met the resurrected monk Grigori Rasputin for the first time. Obsessed with purity, Kroenen quickly became Rasputin’s most loyal disciple. He subsequently joined the Nazi Party, and rose quickly through the ranks, joining the Schutzstaffel in 1933 and achieving the rank of Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel). He was awarded the Iron Cross for services to the Third Reich. Kroenen became head of the Thule Society, a group of German aristocrats obsessed with the occult. He helped them to spearhead Project Ragna Rok, engineering the portal generator that would conjure the Scarlet Beast, Hellboy, in October 1944.

When Allied Forces stormed the island off the coast of Scotland where Project Ragna Rok took place, Kroenen lost his left hand trying to retrieve an active grenade thrown by a young Professor Trevor Bruttenholm. When the grenade exploded, a length of shrapnel impaled Kroenen through the chest. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared.

After Kroenen's disappearance, records were found of his experiments on fusing steel to bone. This is further evidence of Kroenen's philosophy that humanity’s future lay in the marriage of flesh and machine. In 1956, an unmarked grave in Romania was found. Dental records identified the remains as those of Kroenen. However, Kroenen reappeared in 2004.

Using a mixture of occult magic and clockwork, Kroenen created a prosthetic heart and left hand. By cranking the key-like mechanism where his heart should be, he effectively was able to wind up his wrists, allowing him to wield his tonfa swords with superhuman skill and precision. He could also turn the key to "switch off" his body (literally), remaining in a dormant state and appearing dead, until his masters, the Ogdru Jahad, reanimated him. He used this deceptive technique to infiltrate the BPRD headquarters.

A ruthless and cunning assassin, Kroenen was responsible for the deaths of countless people, including scores of Allied Troops, as well as Hellboy’s father figure, Trevor Bruttenholm. He also critically wounded Agent Clay of the BPRD. In Kroenen’s lair beneath Rasputin’s mausoleum in Moscow, Hellboy seemingly avenged Bruttenholm's death by throwing Kroenen into his own trap — a spiked pit hidden beneath a trapdoor. Skewered on the stakes, the undead Kroenen then watched helplessly as Hellboy dropped a giant cog on top of him. However, considering the number of wounds he's sustained over his many years, he could have likely survived. It's never made clear if he was killed in the Hellboy movie, but if he was, he's very capable of being revived, which he's done many times before...