Schleicher appointed Bredow as his successor as head of the Ministerial Office in the Defence Ministry, which was the Reichswehr's favorite instrument for exerting influence on politics.

[3] In the spring of 1934, Bredow was significantly involved in Schleicher's attempt at a political comeback, displaying what Wheeler-Bennett called a "lack of discretion that was terrifying" as he went about casually showing anyone who was interested a proposed new cabinet list.

[5] In the overheated atmosphere of the spring of 1934, when it was an open secret that a rift had emerged between the SA and the Reichswehr, it was easy to misconstrue Bredow's scheming to change the cabinet as a plot to overthrow the Hitler government itself, and both Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, who were plotting against Röhm, transformed Bredow's "irresponsible" intriguing into a gigantic plot to overthrow Hitler, with the additional twist that the alleged conspiracy of Schleicher and Röhm had been organized by the French ambassador André François-Poncet.

[5] Bredow, along with Schleicher, was murdered in Berlin-Lichterfelde by SS men from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler in the Night of the Long Knives.

Bredow was drinking tea on the afternoon of 30 June 1934 at the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, when he heard about the murder of Schleicher that morning on the radio.