Exercise 2: Why Schleicher's Death Closes a Real Arc From Chapters 6 Through 9 — Possible Solution ================================================================================================================== Tracing Schleicher's own full arc across four separate chapters shows why his death isn't just one more name on a casualty list - it's the real, personal conclusion of a specific political story this course had already been following closely. WHERE SCHLEICHER FIRST APPEARED Chapter 7 introduced Kurt von Schleicher as Chancellor from December 1932, attempting the real Querfront strategy - trying to split the Nazi Party by courting Gregor Strasser rather than negotiating with Hitler directly. That same chapter traced his real, specific downfall: Hitler isolated Strasser and defeated the strategy, senior army officers withdrew their support believing only the Nazis could "mobilise popular support," and on 28 January 1933 Hindenburg refused Schleicher's own request for Article 48 emergency powers - the direct trigger for his resignation the next day, clearing the path for Hitler's own appointment two days after that. WHAT SCHLEICHER REPRESENTED IN THAT EARLIER STORY Schleicher was, in the story Chapters 6 and 7 tell, one of the last real political figures who genuinely tried to prevent Hitler from reaching the chancellorship at all - not through open confrontation, but through the same kind of internal political maneuvering that had characterized Weimar politics throughout this course. His failure was a real, specific hinge point: the last serious alternative to a Hitler-led government collapsing, directly opening the door Papen then walked through in Chapter 7's own final act. WHY HIS DEATH IN CHAPTER 9 CLOSES THAT SAME STORY Eighteen months after that failure, during the Night of the Long Knives, Schleicher and his wife were murdered in their own home as part of Hitler's wider purge of real or perceived enemies. The same man whose own government fell because he lost Hindenburg's trust and couldn't out-maneuver Hitler politically was killed by the very government his own defeat had helped bring into being. This isn't a coincidental detail - it's the real, personal completion of the exact political arc Chapters 6 and 7 had already traced in detail: the last man who tried to stop Hitler through ordinary political means didn't just lose that fight, he was later killed by the man who won it. ANSWER: Schleicher's murder closes the arc because Chapters 6 and 7 already established him as the last real political figure who tried to prevent Hitler's rise to power through internal maneuvering rather than open confrontation - a strategy that failed specifically because Hitler out-maneuvered him and Hindenburg withdrew support. His death during the Night of the Long Knives, eighteen months later, is the real, personal conclusion to that same story: the man whose own political defeat helped clear the path to Hitler's appointment was killed by the government that appointment produced, closing a specific individual narrative this course had already been following since Chapter 6. WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER ------------------------------ It traces Schleicher's own specific role across multiple earlier chapters before explaining why his later death completes that particular story, rather than treating his murder as simply one more name in a general list of purge victims.