State). By late January 1933 most senior officers in the Army were advising Hindenburg that Schleicher needed to go. Support for Hitler Chancellorship That same day, Schleicher, learning that his government was about to fall, and fearing that his rival Papen would get the Chancellorship, began to favor a Hitler Chancellorship. Knowing of Papen's by now boundless hatred for him, Schleicher knew he had no chance of becoming Defense Minister in a new Papen government, but he felt his chances of becoming the Defense Minister in a Hitler government were very good. Hitler was initially willing to support Schleicher as Defense Minister but a meeting with Schleicher's associate Werner von Alvensleben convinced Hitler that Schleicher was about to launch a putsch to keep him out of power. In a climate of crisis, with wild rumors running rampant that Schleicher was moving troops into Berlin to depose Hindenburg, Papen convinced the President to appoint Hitler Chancellor the next day. The President dismissed Schleicher, calling Hitler into power on 30 January 1933. In the following months, the Nazis issued the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act, transforming Germany into a dictatorship.The Enabling Act, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Assassination Schleicher's successor as Defense Minister was his arch-enemy Werner von Blomberg. One of Blomberg's first acts as Defense Minister was to carry out a purge of the officers associated with Schleicher. Blomberg sacked Ferdinand von Bredow as chief of the Ministeramt and replaced him with General Walter von Reichenau, Eugen Ott was dismissed as chief of the Wehramt and exiled to Japan as military attaché, and General Wilhelm Adam was fired as chief of the Truppenamt (the disguised General Staff) and replaced with Ludwig Beck. The Army Commander-in-Chief and close associate of Schleicher's, General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, resigned in despair in February 1934 as his powers had become more nominal than real. With Hammerstein's resignation, the entire Schleicher faction which dominated the Army since 1926 had all been removed from their positions within the High Command, and thus destroyed any remaining source of power for Schleicher. In the spring of 1934, hearing of the growing rift between Ernst Röhm and Hitler over the role of the SA in the Nazi state, Schleicher began playing politics again. Schleicher criticized the current Hitler cabinet, while some of Schleicher's followers—such as General Ferdinand von Bredow and Werner von Alvensleben—started passing along lists of a new