Kurt Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann von Schleicher (German: [ˈkʊʁt fɔn ˈʃlaɪçɐ] ; 7 April 1882 – 30 June 1934) was a German military officer and the penultimate chancellor of Germany during the Weimar Republic. A rival for power with Adolf Hitler, Schleicher was assassinated by Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS) during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.
Schleicher was born into a military family in Brandenburg an der Havel. 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 defense 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 Sturmabteilung (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 organised 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.
Kurt Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann von Schleicher was born on 7 April 1882, in Brandenburg an der Havel, the son of Prussian officer and noble Hermann Friedrich Ferdinand von Schleicher (1853–1906) and a wealthy East Prussian shipowner's daughter, Magdalena Heyn (1857–1939). He had an older sister, Thusnelda Luise Amalie Magdalene (1879–1955), and a younger brother, Ludwig-Ferdinand Friedrich (1884–1923). On 28 July 1931, Schleicher married Elisabeth von Schleicher, daughter of the Prussian general Victor von Hennigs. She had previously been married to Schleicher's cousin, Bogislav von Schleicher, whom she had divorced on 4 May 1931.
He studied at the Hauptkadettenanstalt in Lichterfelde from 1896 to 1900. He was promoted to Leutnant on 22 March 1900 and was assigned to the 3rd Foot Guards, where he befriended fellow junior officers Oskar von Hindenburg, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord and Erich von Manstein. From 1 November 1906 to 31 October 1909, he served as adjutant of the Fusilier battalion of his regiment.
After his promotion to Oberleutnant on 18 October 1909, he was assigned to the Prussian Military Academy, where he met Franz von Papen. Upon graduation on 24 September 1913, he was assigned to the German General Staff where he joined the Railway Department at his own request. He soon became a protégé of his immediate superior, Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Groener. Schleicher was promoted to captain on 18 December 1913.
After the outbreak of World War I, Schleicher was assigned to the General Staff at the Supreme Army Command. During the Battle of Verdun, he wrote a manuscript criticising war profiteering in certain industrial sectors, causing a sensation and earning him the approval of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) chairman Friedrich Ebert and a reputation as a liberal. From November 1916 to May 1917, Schleicher served in the Kriegsamt (War Office), an agency tasked with administering the war economy led by Groener.
Schleicher's only front-line mission was as Chief of Staff of the 237th Division on the Eastern Front from 23 May 1917 to mid-August 1917 during the Kerensky Offensive. He served the rest of the war at the Supreme Army Command. He was promoted to Major on 15 July 1918. Following the collapse of the German war effort from August 1918 onward, Schleicher's patron Groener was appointed Erster Generalquartiermeister and assumed de facto command of the German Army on 29 October 1918. As Groener's trusted assistant, Schleicher became a crucial liaison between the civil and military authorities.
Army service after the First World War
After the November Revolution of 1918, the situation of the German military was precarious. In December 1918, Schleicher delivered an ultimatum to Friedrich Ebert on behalf of Paul von Hindenburg demanding that the German provisional government either allow the Army to crush the Spartacus League or the Army would do that task itself.
During the ensuing talks with the German cabinet, Schleicher was able to get permission to allow the Army to return to Berlin. On 23 December 1918, the provisional government under Ebert came under attack from the radical left-wing Volksmarinedivision. Schleicher played a key role in negotiating the Ebert–Groener pact. In exchange for agreeing to send help to the government, Schleicher was able to secure Ebert's assent to the Army being allowed to maintain its political autonomy as a "state within the state".
To crush the left-wing rebels, Schleicher helped to found the Freikorps in early January 1919. Schleicher's role for the rest of the Weimar Republic was to serve as the Reichswehr's political fixer, who would ensure that the military's interests would be secured.
Contacts with the Soviet Union
In the early 1920s, Schleicher emerged as a leading protégé of General Hans von Seeckt, who often gave Schleicher sensitive assignments. In the spring of 1921, Seeckt created a secret group within the Reichswehr known as Sondergruppe R, whose task was to work with the Red Army in their common struggle against the international system established by the Treaty of Versailles. Schleicher worked out the arrangements with Leonid Krasin for German aid to the Soviet arms industry. German financial and technological aid in building the industry was exchanged for Soviet support in helping Germany circumvent the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Schleicher created several dummy corporations, most notably the GEFU (Gesellschaft zur Förderung gewerblicher Unternehmungen, "Company for the Promotion of Industrial Enterprise"), which funnelled 75 million Reichsmarks, some $18 million (equivalent to $340 million in 2025), into the Soviet arms industry by the end of 1923.
At the same time, a team led by Fedor von Bock and comprising Schleicher, Eugen Ott and Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord established what came to be known as the Black Reichswehr. Major Bruno Ernst Buchrucker was tasked with building up the Arbeitskommandos (Work Commandos), officially a labor group intended to assist with civilian projects but in reality a force of soldiers. This fiction allowed Germany to exceed the limits on troop strength set by the Versailles Treaty. The Black Reichswehr became infamous for its practice of using Feme murders to punish "traitors" who, for example, revealed the locations of weapons' stockpiles or names of members. During the trials of some of those charged with the murders, prosecutors alleged that the killings were ordered by the officers from Bock's group.