Kurt von Schleicher military rank general
Kurt Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann von Schleicher (pronounced [ˈkʊʁt fɔn ˈʃlaɪçɐ] (listen); 7 April 1882 – 30 June 1934) was a German general and the penultimate chancellor of Germany during the Weimar Republic. A rival for power with Adolf Hitler, Schleicher was murdered by Hitler's SS during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.
Schleicher was born into a military family in Brandenburg an der Havel on 7 April 1882. Entering the Prussian Army as a lieutenant in 1900, he rose to become a General Staff officer in the Railway Department of the German General Staff and served in the General Staff of the Supreme Army Command during World War I. Schleicher served as liaison between the Army and the new Weimar Republic during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. An important player in the Reichswehr's efforts to avoid the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, Schleicher rose to power as head of the Reichswehr's Armed Forces Department and was a close advisor to President Paul von Hindenburg from 1926 onward. Following the appointment of his mentor Wilhelm Groener as Minister of Defence in 1928, Schleicher became head of the Defence Ministry's Office of Ministerial Affairs (Ministeramt) in 1929. In 1930, he was instrumental in the toppling of Hermann Müller's government and the appointment of Heinrich Brüning as Chancellor. He enlisted the services of the Nazi Party's SA as an auxiliary force for the Reichswehr from 1931 onward.
Beginning in 1932, Schleicher served as Minister of Defence in the cabinet of Franz von Papen. Schleicher organized the downfall of Papen and succeeded him as Chancellor on 3 December. During his brief term, Schleicher negotiated with Gregor Strasser on a possible defection of the latter from the Nazi Party, but the plan was abandoned. Schleicher attempted to "tame" Hitler into cooperating with his government by threatening him with an anti-Nazi alliance of parties, the so-called Querfront ("cross-front"). Hitler refused to abandon his claim to the chancellorship and Schleicher's plan failed. Schleicher then proposed to Hindenburg that the latter disperse the Reichstag and rule as a de facto dictator, a course of action Hindenburg rejected.
On 28 January 1933, facing a political impasse and deteriorating health, Schleicher resigned and recommended the appointment of Hitler in his stead. Schleicher sought to return to politics by exploiting the divisions between Ernst Röhm and Hitler but on 30 June 1934 he and his wife Elisabeth were murdered on the orders of Hitler during the Night of the Long Knives.Military-political role in the Weimar Republic
Despite Seeckt's patronage, it was Schleicher who brought about the former's downfall in 1926 by leaking the fact that Seeckt had invited the former Crown Prince to attend military manoeuvres. After Seeckt's fall Schleicher became, in the words of Andreas Hillgruber, "in fact, if not in name [the] military-political head of the Reichswehr". Schleicher's triumph was also the triumph of the "modern" faction within the Reichswehr, which favored a total war ideology and wanted Germany to become a dictatorship that would wage total war upon the other nations of Europe.During the 1920s Schleicher moved up steadily in the Reichswehr, becoming the primary liaison between the army and civilian government officials. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 1 January 1924, and Colonel in 1926. On 29 January 1929, he became Generalmajor. Schleicher generally preferred to operate behind the scenes, planting stories in friendly newspapers and relying on a casual network of informers to find out what other government departments were planning. Following the hyperinflation of 1923, the Reichswehr took over much of the administration of the country between September 1923 and February 1924, a task in which Schleicher played a prominent role.The appointment of Groener as Defence Minister in January 1928 did much to advance Schleicher's career. Groener, who regarded Schleicher as his "adopted son", created the Ministeramt (Office of the Ministerial Affairs) for Schleicher in 1928. The new office officially dealt with all matters relating to joint concerns of the Army and Navy, and was tasked with liaising between the military and other departments, and between the military and politicians. Because Schleicher interpreted that mandate very broadly, the Ministeramt quickly became the means by which the Reichswehr interfered in politics. The creation of the Ministeramt formalized Schleicher's position as the chief political fixer for the Reichswehr, a role which had existed informally since 1918. He became Chef des Ministeramtes on 1 February 1929.
Like his patron Groener, Schleicher was alarmed by the results of the Reichstag election of 1928, in which the Social Democrats (SPD) won the largest share of the vote on a platform of scrapping the building of Panzerkreuzer A, the intended lead ship of the proposed Deutschland class of "pocket battleships" together with the entire "pocket battleship" building programme. Schleicher opposed the prospect of a "grand coalition" headed by the SPD's Hermann Müller, and made it clear that he preferred that the SPD be excluded from power on the grounds that their anti-militarism disqualified them from office. Both Groener and Schleicher had decided in the aftermath of the 1928 elections to put an end to democracy as the Social Democrats could not be trusted with power. Groener depended on Schleicher to get favorable military budgets passed. Schleicher justified Groener's confidence by getting the naval budget for 1928 passed despite the opposition of the Social Democrats. Schleicher prepared Groener's statements to the Cabinet and attended Cabinet meetings on a regular basis. Above all, Schleicher won the right to brief President Hindenburg on both political and military matters.In 1929, Schleicher came into conflict with Werner von Blomberg, the chief of the Truppenamt (the disguised General Staff). That year Schleicher had started a policy of "frontier defense" (Grenzschutz), under which the Reichswehr would stockpile arms in secret depots and start training volunteers, in excess of the limits imposed by Versailles, in the eastern parts of Germany facing Poland. Blomberg wished to extend the system to the French border. Schleicher disagreed, wanting to give the French no excuse to delay their 1930 withdrawal from the Rhineland. Blomberg lost the struggle and was demoted from command of the Truppenamt and sent to command a division in East Prussia.
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