Josef Grohé German

Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 Nazi Party official, was born in Gemünden im Hunsrück

Gemünden, Rhein-Hunsrück

Gemünden is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Rhein-Hunsrück-Kreis in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany...

 as the son of a shopkeeper. He finished secondary school

Secondary school

Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...

 in 1919 and worked as a clerk in the hardware

Hardware

Hardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....

 industry. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922, and was co-founder of the Nazi organization in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

 and founder of its newspaper, the Westdeutscher Beobachter. In 1931 he was appointed Gauleiter

Gauleiter

A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...

 (regional party leader) of Cologne-Aachen, and in 1932 he was elected to both the Reichstag

Reichstag (Weimar Republic)

The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...

 and the Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

n Staatsrat (State Council). In late 1944, in addition to these posts, he was made the Reichskommissar

Reichskommissar

Reichskommissar , in German history, was an official gubernatorial title used for various public offices during the period of the German Empire and the Nazi Third Reich....

 in German-occupied Belgium and Northern France, although these areas were already being overrun by the Allies. He was arrested by the British occupation authorities in Cologne in 1945 and imprisoned until 1950.

After the war, Grohé remained dedicated to the Nazi cause for the rest of his life.

Source

• Ernst Klee, Das Personen-lexikon zum Dritten Reich (Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main, 2005), 202