Originally Posted by
The One and Only
The body in question was a cloned body of Steve Rogers from cells that the Skull had extracted by Arnim Zola. When the chemicals that had kept the Red Skull alive in suspended animation wore off, and Father Time was nipping at his heels with accelerated aging. Part his master plan to finish off Captain America once ,and for all, including subjecting Cap to a poison that neutralized the time stopping powers of the super-soldier serum in Cap's veins. His plan at the end was to fight Captain America in fight to the finish, die with his most hated foe in final battle, and thanks to Arnim's technology which he used to transfer his own mind into his robot body. To a spanking new Steve Rogers body. All this was explained in CAPTAIN AMERICA#350 in a back up tale with the Skull getting his head back together recounting his life up to emerging from the clone chamber.