Robinson papers

The Robinson papers were a document archive initially consisting of some 800 documents that included detailed intelligence sources, identity documents, maps, cipher coding data and radio messages that were created and kept by Communist International (Comintern) agent Henry Robinson before and during World War II. ^{[1] [2]}

Background

Henry Robinson was a German Jew, born in Brussels who as a young man had radicalised and turned to communism. In 1920, working with Willi Münzenberg and the Swiss Communist Jules Humbert-Droz he had established the Young Communist League of Germany (KJVD). ^[3] In 1921, he was requested to visit the Soviet Union, where he was trained as an espionage agent in the Communist International (Comintern). In 1924, he began his espionage career as director of the AM-Apparat  [ de ] of the KPD for Central and Eastern Europe ^[4] In 1933, Robinson was recruited into Soviet Red Army intelligence ^[5] where he worked with Soviet espionage networks in France, Britain and Switzerland. ^[3]

Discovery

On 20 December 1942 Robinson was arrested in Paris by the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle. ^[6] A hotel room that was used by Robinson was searched by the Gestapo. The floorboard in the hotel were removed and large briefcase containing the archive was discovered. ^[1] These document originals were sent to the RSHA and subsequently seized by Soviet forces during the advance. These were known to be held in Potsdam after World War II. ^[1] However before that event, photostats were made of the archive and these were sent by Abwehr IIIF in France to Abwehrstelle Belgium in Brussels. ^[1] In September 1944, the former Gestapo headquarters at 453 Avenue Louise in Brussels was occupied. It was searched and found to contain the archive of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle in Belgium and covered investigations by the unit in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands ^[7] Within the Sonderkommando archive was the Robinson Papers. These came into the custody of British intelligence after the Liberation of Belgium. ^[1]

Analysis

Once the archive was received, it was sent to the counterintelligence war room of the combined Special Operations Executive-Office of Strategic Services military intelligence service in London. ^[1] The archive was mislabelled when it was going into storage and effectively lost until it was rediscovered in 1947. Aa proper study of the archive was began ^[1] by MI5 officers Michael Serpell and Robert Hemblys-Scales. ^[8]

References

Citations

1. Kesaris 1979, p. 96.
2. West 2005a, p. 228.
3. West 2005a, p. 294.
4. Kesaris 1979, p. 342.
5. Kochik 2006.
6. Bourgeois 2015, pp. 321–322.
7. West 2005a, p. 293.
8. West 2005b, p. 261.

Bibliography

• Bourgeois, Guillaume (24 September 2015). La véritable histoire de l'orchestre rouge[The True Story of the Red Orchestra] (in French). Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions. ISBN   978-2-36942-069-9.
• Kesaris, Paul. L, ed. (1979). The Rote Kapelle: the CIA's history of Soviet intelligence and espionage networks in Western Europe, 1936–1945 (pdf). Washington DC: University Publications of America. p. 96. ISBN   978-0-89093-203-2.
• Kochik, Valery Yakovlevich (22 December 2006). "Арнольд Шнеэ, он же Анри Робинсон" [Arnold Schnee, aka Henri Robinson] (in Russian). Moscow: Konstantin Remchukov. Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Retrieved 18 August 2025.
• West, Nigel (2005a). Mask: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain (1st ed.). Abingdon Oxford: Routledge. ISBN   0-415-35145-6.
• West, Nigel (2005b). Historical dictionary of British intelligence. Lanham (Md.): The scarecrow press. ISBN   0-8108-5050-8.