believed mistakenly that the Reichstag would not dare bring a motion of no-confidence against him as that would mean another election. The ousted Papen now had Hindenburg's ear, and used his position to advise the President to sack Schleicher at the first chance. Papen was urging the aged President to appoint Hitler as Chancellor in a coalition with the Nationalist Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German National People's Party; DNVP) who, together with Papen, would supposedly work to rein in Hitler. Papen was holding secret meetings with both Hitler and Hindenburg, who then refused Schleicher's request for emergency powers and another dissolution of the Reichstag. Schleicher for a long time refused to take seriously the possibility that Papen was working to bring him down. The consequence of promoting the idea of presidential government where everything depended upon President Hindenburg's whims, with the Reichstag weakened, meant that when Hindenburg decided against Schleicher, the latter was in an extremely weak political position. By January 1933, Schleicher's reputation as the destroyer of governments, as a man who was just as happy intriguing against his friends as his enemies, and as a man who had betrayed all who had trusted him, meant he was universally distrusted and disliked by all factions, which further weakened his attempts to stay in power. On 28 January 1933, Schleicher told his Cabinet that he needed a decree from the President to dissolve the Reichstag, or otherwise his government was likely to be defeated on a no-confidence vote when the Reichstag reconvened on 31 January. Schleicher then went to see Hindenburg to ask for the dissolution decree, and was refused. Upon his return to meet with the Cabinet, Schleicher announced his intention to resign, and signed a decree allowing for 500 million Reichsmarks to be spent on public works projects. Schleicher thought his successor was going to be Papen, and as such it was towards blocking that event that Schleicher devoted his energy. On 29 January, Werner von Blomberg was sworn in by Hindenburg as Defense Minister promptly and in an illegal manner because in late January 1933 there were wild and untrue rumors circulating in Berlin that Schleicher was planning on staging a putsch. The military, which until that moment had been Schleicher's strongest bastion of support, now suddenly withdrew its support, seeing the Nazis and not Schleicher as the only ones who could mobilize popular support for a Wehrstaat (Defense