Page 107 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER FIVE

Czechoslovakian servicemen wearing their old Austro-Hungarian uniforms were sometime
employed . The 3 Army created a saboteur training school in Mogliano Veneto .
71
70
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It is worth to notice the debate that took place within the Intelligence Branch about those non-
conventional forms of warfare. On the one hand, the Chief of the Service was in favour of employing
small units of special agents who, in close cooperation with regular forces, would create disorder
behind the enemy lines . On the other, Colonel Ercole Smaniotto and Colonel Amelio Dupont,
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Chiefs of the Intelligence Offices of the 3 and 8 Army respectively, were willing to organize
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partisan squads, to conduct large-scale guerrilla operations under the command of agents who had
been infiltrated specifically for this purpose. To form these squads, prisoners of war who received
help in escaping from Austrian concentration camps in Veneto, as well as supporters belonging to
the civilian population should be recruited .
73
The latter view was deeply influenced by the idea of people’s war of Renaissance and Garibaldian
inspiration and forcefully in contrast with the former approach, which perhaps more realistically
limited the activity to that developed by trained special units .
74
For the necessary communications between the guerrilla teams operating beyond enemy lines
and the Headquarters on other side of the Piave River, in addition to the carrier pigeons, the use
of radio equipment was envisaged, thanks to their limited size and weight achieved by means of
the most advanced technologies. Moreover, innovative ciphers had become available for a more
secure radio transmission during the final phase of the war, because of the extraordinary evolution
in both radio and cryptographic capabilities achieved in the Italian army from 1915 to 1918, as
discussed in the following chapters.

70 Cesare Pettorelli Lalatta, ITO, op. cit., p. 277.
71 Nino Sales, Missioni speciali della Terza Armata, Istituto edizioni accademiche, Udine, 1940; Alessandro Tandura, Tre
mesi di spionaggio oltre Piave. Agosto - ottobre 1918, Longo & Zoppelli, Treviso, 1934; Camillo De Carlo, La spia volante.
Ricordi delle gesta d’oltrepiave, Brentano’s, New York, 1919.
72 Intelligence Office, letter no.11089/A, 20 August 1918, AUSSME, Series L-3, env.166.
73 8 Army Headquarters - Intelligence Office, Memorandum no. 1607, 16 August 1918, Circa una possibile organizzazione
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di moti insurrezionali nei territori invasi, (On the potential organization of uprisings in invaded territories); Memorandum of
6 September 1918, Disegno per l’organizzazione della guerriglia nei territori invasi, (Plan for the organization of guerrilla
in invaded territories); 3 Army Headquarters - Intelligence Office, Report of 4 October 1918, Piano per l’attuazione della
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guerriglia nei terreni invasi (Plan for the application of guerrilla in invaded territories), AUSSME, Series L-3, env.116.
74 Alessandro Gionfrida, Comando Supremo italiano e strategie di guerriglia, “Storia Militare” n.113 February 2003.

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