After witnessing the brutal murder of his family by the Nazis, Max Eisenhardt, was sent to the Auschwitz death camp where he served in the Sonderkommando, the squad of Jewish men forced to helped their Nazi masters operate the gas chambers, ovens, and fire pits of the camp. While in Auschwitz, Max met a gypsy girl named Magda. Max and Magda survived the Holocaust, and later were married. They had a daughter, Anya. Max first consciously used his mutant powers when his family was trapped in a burning house. Unable to rescue his daughter from the blaze due to his inexperience, coupled with interference from a hostile mob, he angrily unleashed his powers to vengefully slaughter the humans. Terrified, Magda left him, and months later discovered that she was pregnant. Magda presumably died after giving birth to mutant twins at Wundagore Mountain. To shake off his pursuers, Max had master forger George Odekirk create the identity of Sinte gypsy “Erik Magnus Lehnsherr.” Max eventually made his way to Israel where he worked as an orderly in a psychiatric hospital near Haifa. He befriended Charles Xavier, with whom he shared lengthy debates, hypothesizing what would happen if humanity were to be faced with a race of super-powered beings. The pair ultimately revealed their true natures to each other when they prevented Nazi war criminal Baron Wolfgang von Strucker from obtaining a large cache of Nazi gold. Causing a cave-in that seemingly killed Strucker, Max realized that his and Xavier’s views on mutant/human relations were incompatible and left with the gold. Fearing another Holocaust, he took an aggressive and lethal stance against humanity. Max has often expressed the belief that mutants, whom he calls Homo sapiens superior, will eventually be the dominant life form on the planet, and has wavered between wanting to exist in harmony with humans, wanting a separate homeland for mutants, and wanting to enforce his superiority over all humanity.

Calling himself Magneto, Max banded together a group he dubbed the Brotherhood of Mutants, later referred to as “Evil” by the media. Among the assembled members were his children, now the mutants Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. Magneto soon found himself opposed by Xavier and his own group, the X-Men. After a battle against the X-Men and the Avengers, Magneto was presumed dead, but managed to survive by using his powers to burrow through the ocean floor into a series of caverns that led him to the secluded Antarctic prehistoric jungle of the Savage Land. There, he used his knowledge of genetic engineering to mutate local savages into super-powered beings he dubbed the Savage Land Mutates. Soon after, Magneto was again opposed by the X-Men, and was once more presumed killed in an explosion. Yet again, Magneto survived, finding himself in the Savage Land city known as the “Land of the Dead” where he discovered a mind-numbing gas that he intended to use against mankind. He projected his astral self to the native peoples, manipulating them into building an airship filled with the gas. His plan was once again foiled by the X-Men, and he fled into the ocean. Rescued by the Mutate Amphibius, Magneto was taken to an island, where Sauron was working on a machine to tap the geothermal energies of the region. Magneto realized that the device could help restore his ailing powers, but was once again opposed by the X-Men and believed dead.