German engineer who worked as Röhm’s agent, broke with the Nazis and was murdered
An electrical engineer born near Nuremberg, he got to know Ernst Röhm in the paramilitary Reichsflagge. In 1931 he became Röhm’s personal agent, building an SA intelligence and press service, and joined the Nazi Party, but in 1932 he broke with Röhm, left the party and passed inside information to the anti-Nazi journalist Fritz Gerlich. On 3 April 1933 a Nazi squad shot him dead at an inn in the Austrian Tyrol. The Brown Book claimed he had introduced van der Lubbe to Röhm.
Also known as: Georg Emil Bell
Activities and affiliations
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1931–1932
Sturmabteilung (SA)Röhm’s personal agentMain
Security, intelligence and policing -
1931–1932
Security, intelligence and policing
Röhm’s Agent, Defector and Murder Victim
Born in Laufamholz near Nuremberg, he studied electrical engineering and worked as an engineer for Siemens-Schuckert and other firms. In the paramilitary Reichsflagge in 1919–1920 he got to know Ernst Röhm. In the late 1920s he was caught up in a plan by Georgian émigrés to forge Soviet chervonets notes and was fined in 1930. In April 1931 a contract made him Röhm’s personal agent, charged with building an SA intelligence service and press office, and that autumn he joined the Nazi Party. In 1932 he drifted away from Röhm, learned in April that he was the target of an assassination plot inside the party, and left it with an open letter in October. He then passed inside information on the Nazi leadership to the Munich anti-Nazi journalist Fritz Gerlich. When the SA raided Gerlich’s paper in March 1933 he fled to Austria, meeting Willi Münzenberg around that time. On 3 April he was shot dead by a Nazi squad at an inn at Durchholzen near Kufstein. The Brown Book used his information and claimed that he had introduced van der Lubbe to Röhm in 1931 and kept a list of Röhm’s lovers. On the day of the Reichstag fire he was in Munich.