Page 144 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

784 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Security informed the President of the Council of Ministers, that it had been established
at his Directorate-General an Information Office aiming at the collection of information
relating to the order and the public way of thinking and it had direct dealings with
the P.S. Director General; the new Office had its own archive and protocol. In 1923
a Special Reserved Office (in Italian Ufficio Speciale Riservato USR) was established
with limited powers having a very difficult life as it did not manage to do much also
because of the very reduced funds allotted.
In the period of the WW I post-war reconstruction, discussions intensified about
the organization abroad and the relevant projects of domestic reorganization of the
informative sector, which led inevitably also to reconsider that kind of activity within
the country, remembering that in addition to the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, the Presidency of the Council also had an efficient intelligence service.
Many proposals were put forward, especially as regards the activities abroad: among
them some tried, without success, to steal even the collection of military intelligence to
the High Commands of the Armed Forces.
The idea that an intelligence coordination was strictly necessary for a proper
evaluation and analysis was implemented and integrated in the jurisdiction of the
new Service established in 1925, the Military Information Service (in Italian Servizio
Informazioni Militare – SIM) but this aim was not reached even due to the lack of clarity
in the constitutive decrees. SIM actually remained in force until the outbreak of WW II,
as the only informative corps of the Army.
Many were the historical reasons for the failure of the new Service as coordinator
of the military intelligence not least the strong reluctance of the Informative Service of
the Italian Navy (in Italian Servizio Informazioni Segreto - SIS) and Aviation (in Italian
Servizio Informazioni Aeronautica - SIA, which was established after the foundation of
“The Blue Army”, as in Italy the Royal Air Force was sometimes called) to be coordinated
by a body always considered only just a part of the Army. During the conflict SIM
managed to coordinate only the counterintelligence and even so with much difficulty.
The synthesis requested in this historical note does not allow to analyze all the long
and complex regulating path of SIM from the its constitution to the its dissolution as
a result of the armistice (September 8, 1943) and the re-establishment of it a few days
later, in Brindisi, by the legitimate Badoglio’s Government; interesting path also for the
ability of its members who collaborated, together with the other Services, with the Anglo
Americans, who had to acknowledge their professional ability after an initial period of
strong distrust towards the Italians.
In the same year of SIM establishment (1925) it was also reorganized the sector
of Public Security with a law on the matter. Fascism strengthened during that period
its other secret services: OVRA, the most known, but it was not the only one. In 1927
there were major changes in the Directorate-General of Public Security, reorganized in
various Divisions the most important of which was the Political Police Division, known
as the dangerous Polpol; the General and Reserved Affairs Division was articulated in
three sections. The Special Reserved Office had in fact no more reason to exist, as Arturo
Bocchini thought, when he became the Police Chief in 1926.