Kurt Ferdinand Friedrich Hermann von Schleicher is a former German general staff officer, military general, and statesman who has served as Prussian Minister of War since his appointment in 1931. Known for his political wit, ability to compromise, and strategic thinking, Schleicher is considered by many as one of the leading grey eminences in Germany's highest echelons, with enormous sway both on civilian and military affairs, between which he arguably acts as the most important bridge.
As an assistant, protégé, and close associate of Wilhelm Groener, Head of the Weltkrieg-era Supreme War Office (Kriegsamt, 1916-17) and later Prussian Minister of War (1920-1923), Schleicher became acquainted with parliamentary practice, upon which he further expanded during his cooperation with the army reformer Hans von Seeckt within the Great German General Staff between 1925 and 1928. On both occasions, Schleicher served as the most important link between parliamentarians and military leaders, and his eventual appointment to lead the Prussian War Ministry cemented his enormous influence in that field.
A clever but ruthless schemer, Schleicher is credited with pulling the strings behind certain events in the background of the October 1934 Lake Lubahn Crisis. The dismissal of the non-compromise foreign-political hardliner Otto von Below, then-Head of the German General Staff and rival of Schleicher, and the latter's replacement with close Schleicher associate Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, as well as the appointment of Imperial Chancellor Herbert von Dirksen in the aftermath of the crisis are attested to Schleicher's far-reaching influence not only on domestic politics and military policy, but also to his dubious ties to Crown Prince Wilhelm himself.
Biography[]
Early Life[]
Kurt von Schleicher was born in Brandenburg an der Havel, the son of a Prussian officer and noble and a wealthy East Prussian shipowner's daughter, Magdalena Heyn. From 1896 to 1900, he attended the Hauptkadettenanstalt in Lichterfelde near Berlin. He was promoted to Leutnant on 22 March 1900 and was assigned to the 3rd Foot Guards, where he befriended fellow junior officers 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 appointment as Oberleutnant on 18 October 1909, he was assigned to the Prussian Military Academy, where he met Franz von Papen, who would over 20 years later become Prussian Minister of Interior and serve in the same cabinet as Schleicher. 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.
The Weltkrieg[]
After the outbreak of the Weltkrieg, Schleicher was assigned to the General Staff at the Supreme Army Command, where he was in charge of important warfare-related matters, first and foremost the supply of the front forces; wide-ranging liaison tasks with the political authorities and the relevant economic bodies in order to coordinate the interests of the front and the homeland; and cooperation with Germany's allies on questions of the joint war effort, provided they were not of a strategic nature and thus the task of the Supreme Army Command. Schleicher became widely respected for his diligence and flexibility.
From November 1916 to May 1917, Schleicher served in the Supreme War Office (Kriegsamt), an agency tasked with administering the war economy led by Groener on behalf of Erich Ludendorff, the mind behind Germany's military successes. For Schleicher, it was significant that social issues were now becoming more important. Groener believed that unhealthy conditions had crept into the homeland with regard to excessive entrepreneurial profits on the one hand and insufficient workers' wages on the other. He decided to take action against this. Unconcerned about the fact that such behaviour was traditionally deemed unacceptable, Groener, as a general, in full uniform, conducted direct negotiations with SPD and union leaders. In this way, Groener succeeded in preventing larger left-wing strikes and demonstrations. Schleicher supported Groener and provided him with useful information via consultations in armament factories. 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 SPD chairman Friedrich Ebert and a reputation as a progressive.
Groener's and Schleicher's progressive-minded attitude became eventually a thorn in Ludendorff's side, and they were removed from the War Office and subsequently sidelined. Schleicher was sent to Galicia as part of his only front-line mission 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, eventually being promoted to Major on 15 July 1918. During that time, the ties between Groener and Schleicher remained entirely severed. At the General Staff, Schleicher manifested his reputation of being a skilled negotiator between civilian and military representatives.
Amassing Influence[]
In early 1920, as a staff officer who had earned the adoration of the SPD and the other parliamentary parties during the war, Schleicher was appointed as one of the few particularly skilled officers who had the privilege of negotiating a secret pact between Chief of the General Staff Paul von Hindenburg and the reformist Reichstag majority, the so-called Brockdorff-Hindenburg Pact, thanks to which the indirect dictatorship of Ludendorff came to a quick fall in February 1920, which in turn resulted in the promulgation of the March Reforms to the Imperial Constitution in 1920. Between an elderly war hero who did not truly hold the SPD, liberals and Zentrum in high regard, and a reformist-led Reichstag which sought to break free of reactionary rule, Schleicher served as one of the intermediaries who got Hindenburg to accept most of the reforms, in exchange for maintaining the privileged status of the Army - thus earning favor, and valuable allies, on both sides.
The reputation of his old patron and superior Groener as a liberal compromiser eventually paved Schleicher's path towards the Prussian War Ministry, where he served as a close advisor and mediator to his friend and supporter, the new Minister of War in the Prussian cabinets of Wilhelm Solf (1920-1922) and Bill Drews (1922-1923), further expanding his ties to both parliamentary leaders and military representatives. While Groener was dismissed in 1923, when the era of post-war progressive policy came to an end, Schleicher managed to remain influential by associating himself closer with famous wartime icon Hans von Seeckt, who would be appointed Chief of the General Staff in 1925. Famous for his army reform plans, Seeckt proved to be highly controversial, and it was Schleicher who was in charge of communicating Seeckt's divisive ideas to parliamentary leaders and the government.
In 1928, Seeckt resigned after clashing with old guard military leaders over his army and air force reform plans. He was replaced by Otto von Below, an old reactionary hardliner, who subsequently also removed Schleicher from his adviser positions.
WIP
Minister of War and Grey Eminence[]
In 1931, Schleicher would struck an absolute key appointment after succeeding Richard von Pawelsz as Prussian Minister of War. As, due to constitutional conflicts, the Empire has never had a national war ministry, the top administrative duties of the army, such as the organization of military personnel and their mobilization, the procurement of weapons and equipment, payment and pensions fell to the hands of the Preußisches Kriegsministerium. Traditionally considered the key connection piece between civilian and military affairs, between the army leadership and the Reichstag - at least during times of peace -, Schleicher managed to become one of the most influential Prussian Ministers of War in recent history and entrenched the ministry's importance even further, mostly due to his political wit and willingness to compromise with parliamentarian leaders; where his old-guard predecessors had often clashed with the emboldened parliament, only to bite on granite in the end, Schleicher was more than once able to gain the trust of the parties and strike a compromise deal in the end. Able to exert real influence on military and civilian affairs and serving as the bridge between them both, Schleicher soon made a certain name for himself, but also drew the ire of his old guard opponents, especially in the General Staff.
His high-ranking position in the War Ministry caused friction with some of his old opponents again. Between Schleicher's War Ministry and Below's General Staff, a looming rivalry began to unfold. Below, not too fond of his young colleague in the War Ministry, attempted everything to diminish his new rival's influence, and the same applied to Schleicher, who was more than interested in seeing Below being dismissed in favour of someone of his own clique of loyalist young officers. The result: Many tense conflicts over the interests of different posts and influence within the military over the course of the early 30s. The situation would reach a new escalation stage in late 1934. The results of the Russian Duma elections of late June 1934 sent shockwaves through the German bloc; with the election of an openly revanchist leadership in the form of President Boris Savinkov and Prime Minister Alexander Dikgoff-Derental, Germany’s entire foreign political Eastern strategy of the last few years was at stake. Ever since, Below and the General Staff had began working in secret on hypothetical preemptive strike plans against the new regime in the East, and when global tensions got out of hand after the Lake Lubahn Incident of October '34, Below was one of the key supporters of an actual implementation of said plans.