Ferdinand von Bredow

Who was Ferdinand von Bredow?

Ferdinand von Bredow was a German Generalmajor and former head of the Abwehr in the Reich Defence Ministry and deputy defence minister in Kurt von Schleicher's cabinet.

Bredow was, along with Schleicher, among Adolf Hitler's bitterest adversaries at the time of the Weimar Republic's downfall. Towards the end of this régime, Bredow, as the leader of Schleicher's personal "information service" was head of a number of coexisting secret service organizations, among them even the SS's Sicherheitsdienst, which was under Reinhard Heydrich's leadership.

Bredow, along with Schleicher, was murdered in Berlin-Lichterfelde by SS men from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. Bredow was tied to a chair and shot five times in the chest on the Night of the Long Knives, a purge in which Hitler eliminated some of his most prominent opponents.