Josef Grohé

Josef Grohé
Grohé in Nazi uniform
Gauleiter of Cologne
In office 1 June 1931 – 8 April 1945
Leader	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Reichskommissar for Belgium and Northern France
In office 18 July 1944 – 15 December 1944
Appointed by	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Position created
Succeeded by	Position abolished
Personal details
Born	November 6, 1902 Gemünden im Hunsrück, German Empire
Died	December 27, 1987 (1987-12-28) (aged 85) Köln, West Germany
Political party	NSDAP

Josef Grohé (6 November 1902 – 27 December 1987) was a German Nazi Party official. He was the Gauleiter of Gau Cologne-Aachen and Reichskommissar for Belgium and Northern France.

Background

Grohé was born in Gemünden im Hunsrück as the son of a shopkeeper. He finished secondary school in 1919 and worked as a clerk in the hardware industry.

Politics and official positions

Grohé was already active in anti-democratic and racist organizations as an adolescent. He joined the anti-Semitic Deutschvölkischer Schutz und Trutzbund and the Nazi Party in 1922. He was co-founder of the Nazi organization in Cologne in 1922 and founder of its newspaper, the Westdeutscher Beobachter. On 1 June 1931 he was appointed Gauleiter (regional party leader) of the newly formed Gau Cologne-Aachen. In April 1932 he was elected to the Prussian Staatsrat. In November 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 20, Cologne-Aachen. Unlike most all other Gauleiters, Grohé did not belong to the SA or the SS; however, from 30 January 1939 he was an Obergruppenführer in the National Socialist Motor Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps or NSKK). On 16 November 1942, he was appointed the Reich Defense Commissioner for his Gau.

On 18 July 1944, in addition to these posts, Grohé was made the Reichskommissar of the newly created civilian administration in German-occupied Belgium and Northern France. From September 1944, however, the territory's liberation by the Allies had begun. In 1945, he organized the Cologne Volkssturm and ordered the demolition of five large bridges over the Rhine. On 6 March 1945, he fled Cologne across the Rhine ahead of advancing US forces. On 8 April he dissolved his Gau organization and fled toward the Ore Mountains where he stayed until the end of the war before returning to western Germany.

Post-war

After surviving a suicide attempt, he worked as a farm laborer under an assumed name in Heringhausen and managed to evade capture until he was arrested by the British occupation authorities on 22 August 1946. Grohé remained dedicated to the Nazi cause for the rest of his life and showed no remorse. In 1950, he was sentenced to a four and a half years imprisonment (time served) by a court in Bielefeld for being a part of the political leadership of the Nazi party. He had known of the Holocaust, but the court was not able to prove his involvement in atrocities. After being released from imprisonment, he continued his professional career as a sales representative for German toy manufacturers. He died on 27 December 1987 in Brück, Cologne.

Further reading

• Ernst Klee, Das Personen-lexikon zum Dritten Reich (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main, 2005), 202
• Gauleiter: The Regional Leaders Of The Nazi Party And Their Deputies, 1925-1945 (Herbert Albreacht-H. Wilhelm Huttmann)-Volume 1 by Michael D. Miller and Andreas Schulz R. James Bender Publishing, 2012.

External links

• Newspaper clippings about Josef Grohé in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW