He worked as a purchasing agent in a factory, and participated in armed resistance and acts of sabotage against the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1922 and 1923.

On 14 September 1933, Grohé was made a member of the Prussian State Council and on 12 November 1933 he was elected to the Reichstag from electoral constituency 20, Cologne-Aachen.

[5] A virulent anti-Semite, during speeches in March 1935 Grohé advocated renewed boycotts and intensified attacks on Jews as a means to raise support for the Party among the lower middle classes.

[6] 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).

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.

[1] 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.

[8] 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.

[9] 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.

[10]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.

[11] On 18 September 1950, he was sentenced to 4+1⁄2 years' imprisonment (time served) by a denazification court in Bielefeld for being a part of the political leadership of the Nazi Party.