Ernst Boepple


SS-Oberführer Ernst Boepple was a Nazi official and SS officer, serving as deputy to Josef Bühler in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust, who was executed for war crimes.

Life

Boepple earned his Abitur in 1905 at the Gymnasium in Reutlingen. Then he studied languages and history at several universities: University of Tübingen, University of Paris, University of Oxford, and the
University of London and earned his PhD in 1915.—with the doctoral thesis: Frederick the Great's Relation to Württemberg. He fought in the First World War in the infantry and left the German Army with the rank of first lieutenant in 1919.

Director of Nazi publishing enterprise

Boepple became a co-worker of the publisher Julius Friedrich Lehmann and was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party. In 1919 he took over the Deutsche Volksverlag publishing house, which had been established by Lehmann. There he published Anton Drexler's My Political Awakening. The Deutsche Volksverlag published a large section of the early formative National Socialist literature including:
In November 1923 Ernst Boepple took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.

World War II

When Hans Schemm died after an aircraft crash, Boepple became the Bavarian Minister for Culture until the invasion of Poland in 1939. In 1940 he again served in the military. On September 1, 1941, he was appointed the State Secretary of the General Government in occupied Poland, serving as deputy to Deputy Governor Josef Bühler. Boepple was deeply implicated in the Final Solution as the deputy to Bühler and also held rank in the SS, being an SS-Oberführer.
Boepple was sentenced to death by a Polish court on December 14, 1949 and hanged on December 15, 1950.

Publications