The creators of Captain America ended up being braver than Steve Rogers himself, and they nearly got themselves killed for their actions. Writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby's landmark superhero took America, and eventually the world, by storm when Captain America Comics #1 was released, but publishing an anti-Nazi comic was not without its dangers. Even without a dose of super-soldier serum, Simon and Kirby proved themselves more than worthy of the term superhero when they went up against Nazis in their own country.
By 1941, the Golden Age of Comics had already seen the debut of Batman and Superman - the latter of whom inspired many similar characters with similar names. Because of this, Joe Simon refrained from calling his new patriotic superhero "Super-American", saying that while there were a lot of 'super-'s around, there weren't many captains. Thus, Captain America, created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, made his debut in 1941. The only problem? It was March of 1941... and America wouldn't join the war in Europe until December 11th.
Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, over 75% of Americans were staunchly against war; many remembered World War I and refused to get involved in yet another "European war." But that wasn't the only problem faced by Simon and Kirby: pre-Pearl, there was a not-insignificant faction of the country that actually supported Hitler, or at least refused to condemn his actions. In his 2003 book The Comic Book Makers from The Great Comic Book Heroes, Joe Simon writes "We were inundated with a torrent of raging hate mail and vicious, obscene telephone calls. The theme was 'death to the Jews'...[and] people in the office reported seeing menacing-looking groups of strange men in front of the building on Forty Second Street."
Though the issue seems benign to readers now, Simon and Kirby made a bold statement when they decided to use an American flag-clad hero to punch Hitler in the face on the cover. As vile as he was, Adolf Hitler was still seen as a legitimate world leader at the time; punching Hitler in 1941 would be tantamount to Captain America punching Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping in 2021. The American Nazi Party continued to send the duo death threats until the Mayor of New York City himself came to their aid. Fiorello LaGuardia admired Captain America and gave Simon and Kirby police protection, saying that "...the city of New York will see that no harm will come to you." The death threats ceased soon after. Once World War II began in earnest for America and war was declared on Nazi Germany, the American Nazi Party practically disbanded overnight.
Joe Simon had strong political opinions long before writing Captain America; he was an anti-isolationist who believed evil like Hitler should be fought, not ignored. Jack Kirby shared Simon's outlook and the fact that two Jews were openly critical of Hitler (in a country still rife with antisemitism of its own) should not be overlooked. Captain America came out of a desire to call out atrocities and fight them tooth and nail, even when that course of action isn't necessarily popular.
Source: The Great Comic Book Heroes
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