Steve Rogers grew up in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, a scrawny kid protected from neighborhood bullies by his best friend James "Bucky" Barnes and eventually was orphaned. Horrified by newsreel footage of the Nazis in Europe, Rogers was inspired to enlist in the Army around the time the United States entered World War II, but because time and again he failed the physical tests, he was rejected. His luck changed during another visit to Recruitment Center in 1942 when Military Sergeant Dugan recruited him for Project Rebirth after hearing of Rogers passion to be involved. After volunteering to be subjected to surgery, steroid treatments, and other experiments supervised by Dr. Erskine, Rogers became the first successful genetically-enhanced American Super-Soldier.
