According to his British passport issued under his alias of Dolbey in 1943, Dobrski was born in 1901. A resumé of his service with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which he compiled in early 1944 states that he was educated in France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, had gained a BSc from the University of Lyons and had been Managing Director of a textiles business prior to the outbreak of World War Two. He collaborated with the Ministry of Information and Ministry of Economic Warfare on propaganda matters from Sep 1939, and then more closely in early 1940 with Lt Col Lawrence Grand of SOE, and was also travelling in France and Italy. In Sep 1940 he was appointed to take a field command for penetration by SOE of Italy, but was diverted to help with recruitment and training of agents for the Italian field. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in Mar 1941, and attached to the Royal Navy at Milford Haven to work on special sabotage, promoted Captain in Sep 1941, and then sent to Cairo and Malta to train agents for Italy and plan raids on Sicily and Tunisia. In Jul 1942 he was moved to Jerusalem, working on Italian propaganda, including radio broadcasts to Italy, and the formation of the anti-fascist movement 'Giustizia e Libertà'. He was moved back to Cairo in Nov 1942, the headquarters of SOE's Force 133, where his staff work involved the recruitment of Italian agents, and the planning of operations against Axis forces in the Dodecanese and Balkans. He travelled to Turkey in Jul 1943 with a brief to contact officers of the Italian Cuneo Division on Samos to obtain their surrender, and similarly participated in an unsuccessful mission to Rhodes in Sep 1943 to obtain the surrender of the Italian garrison there. His superiors denied his efforts to be transferred from Cairo to take on a field command in Italy, and he remained with Force 133 in subsequently more senior staff positions described below. He remained in Cairo until late 1945, overseeing the winding down of SOE's organisation in the Mediterranean. Despite tentative efforts to secure him a permanent position in a reorganised SOE/Secret Intelligence Service, he returned to his pre war work for Lyons Silk Ltd, French Silhouettes and Arnold Securities, all associated companies of the French textile group Maison J Bourdelin, and later rose to European President of the telecommunications group Automatic Electric of Chicago.
Presented to the Centre by the family in 1989, 1995 and 2000, via the 2nd Earl Jellicoe.
The papers of Count Julian Dobrski offer a significant contribution to an understanding of the activities of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), particularly in its Greek theatre of operations from 1943-1945. The papers mainly comprise official correspondence, memoranda and reports, which centre on Dobrski's service (under the alias of Julian Dolbey) with the Headquarters of SOE at Cairo, Egypt, known under the codename of 'Force 133'. Here Dobrski held a succession of senior staff posts, as G (SO) and later G (SOE) of Force 133 and then GSO 1 of Force 133's Eastern Mediterranean Group, the section tasked with operations in the Greek theatre from 1944-1945. Dobrski appears to have provided a vital co-ordinating and liaison role between the Commanding Officer of Force 133, SOE officers in the field, section heads and staff of Headquarters Force 133, SOE in London, and other bodies such as the General Staff of Headquarters Middle East and the Political Warfare Executive.
The collection opens with a series of four SOE training manuals, dated 1941-1944, and aimed principally at SOE agents infiltrating German occupied North West Europe (Dobrski 1). The manuals were composed of summaries of the crucial points of the series of lectures and training exercises given to prospective agents, and so concern themselves with such subjects as the establishment of the agent's cover and alibis in the field, means of communication, the selection of suitable targets for sabotage, the creation of cells of informants and sub-agents, means of resisting interrogation, and for the production of anti-German propaganda and the execution of passive resistance by civilians in occupied territory. There follow a series of SOE memoranda (mostly undated and with little indication to authority) covering a variety of topics such as the 'Rhine' or River Mine, inland waterways, poisons and the activities of the 'New Zionists' (Dobrski 2-3).
Five files (Dobrski 4-8) deal specifically with the infiltration of Italy by SOE and the production of propaganda targetted at Italian civilian and military audiences. These progress from guidelines for the content of radio broadcasts and leaflets to transcripts of radio broadcasts to Italy from Radio Jerusalem, as well as SOE memoranda on the potential for operations in Sicily and the recruitment of Italian POWs as SOE agents.
The papers also illustrate the importance of propaganda in the activities of Force 133 in Greece, the Aegean and the Balkans. These range from the strategic planning of propaganda operations in conjunction with the Political Warfare Executive (Dobrski 15) to tactical plans for its subversive use in the aftermath of the kidnapping by SOE in Apr 1944 of Maj Gen Heinrich Kreipe, the Commanding Officer of the German 22 Div on Crete, in an effort to demoralize his troops and encourage the mutiny of German forces garrisoned in the Greek Islands (Dobrski 14 and 22). Indeed papers regarding SOE operations on Crete are well represented, including Maj Patrick Leigh Fermor's report on his kidnapping of Gen Kreipe (Dobrski 21/1), Capt Guy Turrall's detailed diary of his unsuccessful mission in early 1942 to sabotage enemy shipping and liaise with Cretan partisans (Dobrski 9), and plans and progress reports, 1943-1944 (Dobrski 17). The role of SOE in attempting to control the withdrawal of German forces from Greece and the subsequent vacuum of power may be seen in the papers relating to the tentative approaches for negotiations between the German authorities and SOE (Dobrski 23) and in the proposals to prevent German sabotage and maintain law and order (Dobrski 21/3). Besides Greece, the collection also contains proposals and progress reports of SOE penetration in Bulgaria, Hungary Rumania and Yugoslavia.
Four files maintained by Dobrski and his predecessors as GSO 1 of the Eastern Mediterranean Group of Force 133 (Dobrski 27-30) comprise papers relating to personnel issues affecting staff of the Group mainly in regard to promotions, transfers, leave, and welfare, as well as reports on the performance of individuals. Due to the sensitive personal nature of some of the papers contained within these files, access is currently closed (see conditions of access below). Papers from this period also include a file of correspondence between Dobrski and Lt Col John Mulgan (Dobrski 34), which contain material on Mulgan's role in winding up SOE's organisation and operations in Greece in early 1945, as well as Mulgan's diary for 1944 (Dobrski 20). The SOE papers in the collection conclude with two comprehensive reports on SOE's wartime activities in Greece and the Aegean (Dobrski 35) and in Crete (Dobrski 37).
The collection is mostly composed of discrete files where little sorting was required; therefore the original order of papers within files has been maintained. The papers have been allocated into four major sections covering SOE training, SOE activities in Italy, SOE activities in Greece and the Balkans, and various papers (see brief list above). Within each section, the papers have been arranged, where possible, in chronological order. Dobrski file 21/1-12 'GSD 85, Special Operations' was a large and significant file which had been divided at the time of its creation into logical sub-sections, and these have been listed separately and in the order they occur in the original file.
The files of confidential letters relating to personnel matters of Force 133 (Dobrski 27-30) are closed for 75 years in line with the policy of the Public Record Office. The remainder of the collection is open, subject to signature of reader's undertaking form.
Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied for research use only. Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, attention of the Director of Archive Services.
Mainly English, some French, Greek and Italian.
The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives holds several collections relating to SOE operations in Greece and the Balkans, most notably the papers of Capt Patrick Hutchinson Evans (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Evans); Brig Edmund Charles Wolf Myers (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Myers); Maj Philip Frederick Nind (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Nind); Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Prentice); and Col (Hon) Christopher Montague Woodhouse (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Woodhouse).
The Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives holds several collections relating to SOE operations in Greece and the Balkans, most notably the papers of Capt Patrick Hutchinson Evans (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Evans); Brig Edmund Charles Wolf Myers (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Myers); Maj Philip Frederick Nind (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Nind); Maj Ronald R Prentice and Capt H Arthur Wickstead (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Prentice); and Col (Hon) Christopher Montague Woodhouse (Ref: GB99 KCLMA Woodhouse).