After the Germans' uncontested invasion of Czechoslavakia on 15 March 1939, for a time they encouraged Jews to leave the country while opposing the emigration of "political" refugees.

In August he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the SS and had Heinrich Müller name him his personal representative and the head of the Gestapo (section IV of the BdS covering France), with the title of criminal director.

His activities during the time he spent in Paris passed from repression and interrogations to the frequent use of torture in the courts by his subordinates such as Ernst Misselwitz, but also fashionable soirées and little gifts offered by Henri Lafont, derived from the black market or from war loot.

In 1941 he succeeded Rudy de Mérode at 43, avenue Victor-Hugo in Neuilly, in a Gasthaus (a house reserved for "forced" guests), which came to be called villa Boemelburg.

[7] In summer 1941 he made a trip to the unoccupied zone to reactivate pre-war agents, and in the autumn he supervised the inquiry into Paul Collette, who had tried to assassinate Pierre Laval and Marcel Déat.

Bömelburg was transferred to Vichy, where he represented Carl Oberg, and then in June 1944 replaced SS captain Hugo Geissler (killed in an ambush near Murat) as head of the Gestapo in the southern zone of France.

[8] He was condemned to death in absentia on 2 March 1950 by a military tribunal meeting in Lyon, and the Czechoslovak authorities were also seeking him for trial for war crimes.