Josef Robotka (1906–1952)
Josef Robotka was born on 25 February 1906 in Tasov (in the district of Třebíč in the Vysočina region). He was the son of an innkeeper and he had two siblings – his brother František and his sister Marie. In September 1925, after graduating with a general education and leaving certificate from a secondary school in Velké Meziříčí, he voluntarily signed up for the armed forces and began studying as an army academic at the Military Academy in Hranice. He was discharged from there two years later as an infantry lieutenant and was attached to the Third Border Battalion in Žamberk. In September 1927, he was sent as a trainee to a training school in Milovice. When he returned, he was assigned as a platoon commander to the Thirty Ninth Infantry Regiment in Bratislava. In 1931, he completed a three-month course for aircraft observers and was subsequently assigned to the Second Air Force in Olomouc. His sojourn with this unit was short-lived, however. At his own request, he was discharged from the air corps and he returned to his previous post. In 1932, he was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant and he got married a few months later. After successfully finishing another course for infantry officers, he was sent to the Military University in 1935. He successfully completed his studies in April 1938, and was assigned to the command of the Sixth Army Corps in Košice. By that time, he already held the rank of Captain, which he had obtained a year previously.
Robotka returned to his parents in Velká Biteš when the Czech lands were occupied by Germany, and Slovakia was declared an independent state. After the disbandment of the army, he entered the civil service, where he began working as an administrative superintendent, initially with the district authority in Tišnov and later with the authority in Valašské Meziříčí. By that time, however, he had already become involved in resistance activity as part of the Brno branch of the National Defence underground military organisation. Upon the arrival of Reinhard Heydrich as Reichsprotektor in the autumn of 1941, he left this post at his own request, and began working at the municipal savings bank in Brno in 1942. After a few months, he also quit this job and “ostensibly” became a forestry worker. He went underground in the spring of 1944. In the summer of 1942, he established contact with General Staff Captain Karel Steiner-Veselý, General Vojtěch Luža and Professor Josef Grňa. Together with them he gradually built up a new organisation known as the “Council of Three” (“Rada Tří” – R3) from the remnants of the original resistance movements. He was originally a political leader for this group before becoming the military representative for Moravia after the death of General Luža. He was awarded many honours for his activities during the War, including a Czechoslovak Military Cross 1939, a Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery in the Face of the Enemy, a Czechoslovak Medal of Merit of the First Degree, a Soviet Medal for Victory over Germany, and a Czechoslovak Partisan Badge.
After the War, Robotka joined the army once more in May 1945. This time he was stationed in Military Area 3 (VO-3) in Brno. In the interim, he was also retrospectively promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel of the General Staff. Despite this, he was unhappy with the new situation and found it particularly difficult to tolerate efforts by communists to play down and cast doubts on the role of R3 in the anti-Nazi resistance, which manifested itself in the trial of Viktor Ryšánek, an informer for the Gestapo in Brno. Moreover, Robotka also criticised the manner in which important posts were filled. This was perhaps the reason why his application to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party was rejected, which should have been a warning signal. In March 1947, he was sent to the Voroshilov Academy in Moscow, but he did not complete his studies and was sent back to Prague on 7 January 1948 as an undesirable person by the Soviet authorities together with Lieutenant Colonel František Skokan. He was subsequently transferred to the VO-2 Military Area in Tábor before being reassigned after the communist seizure of power in 1948 to the Twenty Fourth Infantry Regiment in Znojmo, where he worked briefly as a battalion commander. Because of health problems, he was sent to a military hospital in Brno in April 1948. After that, he spent a month at the spas in Trenčianské Teplice, and was given three months sick leave in August. During this period, he was under complete surveillance by the defence intelligence authorities, and it was only a question of time before he was dismissed from the army as an undesirable element. This eventually happened on 1 October 1948, when he was placed on enforced leave. He was finally discharged in June 1949.
The final acts of Josef Robotka’s life were typified by his return to resistance activity, although this time it was naturally directed against “red” totalitarianism. Through the intermediary Rudolf Boleslav, he managed to establish contact with the centre of resistance, which had already been set up in Frankfurt in conjunction with the American CIC intelligence service by Robotka’s acquaintance, the former General Staff Lieutenant Colonel Alois Šeda. He subsequently sent reports to this centre containing political, economic and military information, using both couriers and airmail dispatched via Holland. The letters appeared innocuous at first glance, but text was always written between the lines in “invisible” ink. In order to ensure a sufficient supply of important intelligence material, Robotka set about building up a reporting network (although this was definitely not similar in nature to the type of system subsequently established by the Secret Police). This network was primarily composed of people he knew from the time of the German occupation. The opposing camp did not remain inactive, however. On 1 April 1949, the military authorities managed to arrest Milan Šeda (a nephew of Alois Šeda), who had returned to Czechoslovakia as a cross-border agent. His testimony was the basis for the gradual arrest of leading figures in the resistance movement. Josef Robotka’s turn came on 25 July 1949.
After a long investigation lasting nine months, which was conducted using the usual Secret Police methods, Josef Robotka and 11 other people were brought before a panel of judges at the State Court in Brno (with Antonín Piak as the presiding judge and Antonín Mykiska as the prosecutor). After an in camera trial process, which bore all the hallmarks of a political trial (among other things, it found that R3 was a Gestapo organisation), Robotka was sentenced to death as one of this group for the crimes of treason and espionage. He was also stripped of his civil rights and forfeited all his property. When the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal and clemency was denied, the end was inevitable. Despite the fact that the execution was put off for a long time (primarily because of the Secret Police’s incessant interest in him), the worst eventually came to the worst on 12 November 1952, when General Staff First Lieutenant Josef Robotka was put to death in the early hours of the morning.
Josef Robotka was rehabilitated after the fall of the communist regime, and in 1991 he was posthumously promoted to the rank of Brigadier General in memoriam. Furthermore, on 28 October 1997, the president of the Czech Republic awarded him the Order of the White Lion, Third Class.