Kurt von Schleicher

Biography

Kurt von Schleicher was born in 1882 in Brandenburg an der Havel into a Prussian military family. He was commissioned into the 3rd Foot Guards in 1900, attended the Prussian Military Academy from 1909 to 1913 and then joined the railway department of the General Staff, where he became a protégé of Wilhelm Groener. In the First World War he served mostly with the Supreme Army Command, apart from a few months in 1917 as a divisional chief of staff on the Eastern Front.

After the 1918 revolution Schleicher acted as a link between the army and the new republican government, and in the 1920s he became a central political figure inside the Reichswehr, involved in schemes to evade the Versailles limits on German armed forces. Groener created the Ministeramt for him in 1928-29, and Schleicher used his access to President Hindenburg to help bring down Hermann Müller's government in 1930 and install Heinrich Brüning.

In June 1932 he became Reichswehr minister under Franz von Papen and helped organise the July 1932 removal of the Social Democratic government of Prussia. He then turned against Papen and replaced him as chancellor on 3 December 1932. His attempts to split the Nazi Party through Gregor Strasser and to build a broad 'cross-front' failed, Hindenburg refused him emergency powers, and he resigned on 28 January 1933, two days before Hitler was appointed. On 30 June 1934 he and his wife were shot dead at their home during the Night of the Long Knives.