Steven Rogers was born in the 1920s in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, to poor Irish immigrants, Sarah and Joseph Rogers.[53] Joseph died when Steve was a child, and Sarah died of pneumonia while Steve was a teen. By early 1940, before America's entry into World War II, Rogers is a tall, scrawny fine arts student specializing in illustration, and a comic book writer and artist.
Disturbed by the rise of the Third Reich, Rogers attempts to enlist but is rejected due to his frail body. His resolution attracts the notice of U.S. Army General Chester Phillips and "Project: Rebirth." Rogers is used as a test subject for the Super-Soldier project, receiving a special serum made by "Dr. Josef Reinstein",[54][55] later retroactively changed to a code name for the scientist Abraham Erskine.[56] The name "Erskine" was first used in a Captain America novel The Great Gold Steal by Ted White published by Bantam Books in 1968.
The serum is a success and transforms Steve Rogers into a nearly perfect human being with peak strength, agility, stamina, and intelligence. The success of the program leaves Erskine wondering about replicating the experiment on other human beings.[55] The process itself has been inconsistently detailed: while in the original material Rogers is shown receiving injections of the Super-Serum, when the origin was retold in the 1960s, the Comic Code Authority had already put a veto over graphic description of drug intake and abuse, and thus the Super-Serum was retconned into an oral formula.[57] Later accounts hint at a combination of oral and intravenous treatments with a strenuous training regimen, culminating in the Vita-Ray exposure.
Erskine refused to write down every crucial element of the treatment, leaving behind a flawed, imperfect knowledge of the steps. Thus, when the Nazi spy Heinz Kruger killed him, Erskine's method of creating new Super-Soldiers died. Captain America, in his first act after his transformation, avenges Erskine. In the 1941 origin story and in Tales of Suspense #63, Kruger dies when running into machinery but is not killed by Rogers; in the Captain America #109 and #255 revisions, Rogers causes the spy's death by punching him into machinery.[55]
Unable to create new Super-Soldiers and willing to hide the Project Rebirth fiasco, the American government casts Rogers as a patriotic superhero, able to counter the menace of the Red Skull as a counter-intelligence agent. He is supplied with a patriotic uniform of his own design,[53] a bulletproof shield, a personal side arm, and the codename Captain America, while posing as a clumsy infantry private at Camp Lehigh in Virginia. He forms a friendship with the camp's teenage mascot, James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes.[54]
Barnes learns of Rogers' dual identity and offers to keep the secret if he can become Captain America's sidekick. During their adventures, Franklin D. Roosevelt presents Captain America with a new shield, forged from an alloy of steel and vibranium, fused by an unknown catalyst, so effective that it replaces his own firearm.[56] Throughout World War II, Captain America and Bucky fight the Nazi menace both on their own and as members of the superhero team the Invaders as seen in the 1970s comic of the same name.[58] Captain America battles a number of criminal menaces on American soil, including a wide variety of costumed villains: the Wax Man,[59] the Hangman,[60] the Fang,[61] the Black Talon,[62] and the White Death,[63] among others.
In addition to Bucky, Captain America was occasionally assisted by the Sentinels of Liberty.[64] Sentinels of Liberty was the title given to members of the Captain America Comics fan club who Captain America sometimes addressed as an aside, or as characters in the Captain America Comics stories.
In late April 1945, during the closing days of World War II, Captain America and Bucky try to stop the villainous Baron Zemo from destroying an experimental drone plane. Zemo launches the plane with an armed explosive on it with Rogers and Barnes in hot pursuit. The pair reaches the plane just before take off. When Bucky tries to defuse the bomb, it explodes in mid-air. Rogers is hurled into the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. Both are presumed dead, though it is later revealed that neither one died.[65]