Rüdiger Schleicher

Who was Rüdiger Schleicher?

Rüdiger Schleicher was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism.

Born in Stuttgart, Schleicher was married to Ursula Bonhoeffer, Karl Bonhoeffer's daughter and Dietrich and Klaus Bonhoeffer's sister. His daughter Renate married Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friend and fellow theologian, Eberhard Bethge.

Schleicher studied law in Tübingen and graduated with a doctorate in 1923 with a dissertation on "International Air Travel Law." After working in the Württemberg government service and the German-American Arbitration Committee at the Foreign Office, he became an official in the Reich Transport Ministry in 1927. In 1933, he was posted to the newly established Reich Air Travel Ministry. There, beginning in 1935, he headed the legal department as a ministerial adviser. On 14 August 1939, less than three weeks before the war broke out, Schleicher was removed as leader of the legal department and given a job as a consultant in the General Air Office. His advocacy, in publications and presentations, of international law, the war renunciation pact, and the Hague Conventions did not sit well with the government.