Josef Grohé

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

Early life Grohé was born the son of a farmer and shopkeeper. He tried to join the Imperial German Navy during the First World War in 1918, but was refused for being underage. He attended business school from 1919 to 1921 and worked as a clerk in the hardware industry. Unlike most all other Gauleiters, Grohé did not belong to the SA or the SS; however, from 30 January 1939 he was promoted to Obergruppenführer in the National Socialist Motor Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrerkorps or NSKK).

On 10 February 1942, Grohé was named Reich Defense Commissioner for Wehrkreis (Military District) VI which comprised his Gau together with Gau Dusseldorf, Gau Essen and most of Gau Westphalia-North and Gau Westphalia-South. Although charged with responsibility for civil defense measures, there was little Grohé could do to protect his jurisdiction from Allied air attacks, though he was awarded the War Merit Cross first class with Swords for his efforts in assisting the residents of his Gau in the wake of the raids. Operation Millennium on 30–31 March 1942 was the first thousand-bomber air raid conducted by the RAF. It resulted in the deaths of over 450 people in Cologne and approximately 45,000 were left homeless. On 16 November 1942, the jurisdiction of the Reich Defense Commissioners was changed from the Wehrkreis to the Gau level, and he remained Commissioner for only his Gau.

On 18 July 1944, Grohé was made the Reichskommissar of the newly created Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France. However, his reign was short, as from September 1944 the territory's liberation by the Allied armies had begun and Grohé effectively could exercise no authority; on 15 December the Reichskommissariat was formally dissolved. Also in September 1944 Grohé, like all Gauleiters, assumed command of the Volkssturm militia units in his Gau. In early March 1945, Grohé ordered the demolition of five large bridges over the Rhine. Finally 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. In his diary entry of 3 April 1945, Joseph Goebbels harshly criticized Grohé's actions:

Our Gauleiters both in the West and the East have acquired a bad habit: having lost their Gau, they defend themselves in long memoranda seeking to prove that they were in no way responsible. For instance there is another one of these exposés, this time from Grohé. It is not in the least convincing. Despite a series of pompous declarations, Grohé has not defended his Gau. He deserted it before the civil population had been removed and now wants to present himself as a great hero.

Post-war life After surviving a suicide attempt, Grohé 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. Turned over to Belgian authorities on 7 May 1947, he was sent back to Germany on 30 September 1949 without having been prosecuted. On 18 September 1950, he was sentenced to years' imprisonment (time served) by a denazification 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. Between 1951 and 1953, he was associated with the group of former Nazis known as the Naumann Circle, headed by Werner Naumann, which tried to infiltrate the Free Democratic Party of West Germany. Grohé remained dedicated to the Nazi cause for the rest of his life and showed no remorse. He died on 27 December 1987.