Page 117 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER SIX

period, a daily war bulletin in Italian, English, and French, received by several countries: from
Russia to Egypt, from Spain to the Netherlands.
In 1917, the Italian navy built the San Paolo Station in Rome, which allowed stable communications
with the United States of America, where newspapers could inform the Italian immigrants about
the more recent war events .
8
The spread of telecommunications, in particular telephony and radio communications, urged
belligerent Armies to refine techniques capable to gather as much information as possible from
enemy transmissions and, on the other hand, to defend one’s own communications from any
intrusion by the opponents.

6.2 THE ATTACK ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS

The sTarT of TelecoMMunIcaTIon InTercePTIons

The spreading of electric telegraphy, during the second half of the 19 century, had led to flourish
th
‘commercial codes’ designed to guarantee a minimum standard of security and, above all, to cope
with the high tariffs for dispatch transmission, particularly at international level. Such codebooks,
sold without any restrictions, replaced words or even entire sentences with groups of letters and/
or figures of a limited length, achieving considerable cost savings .
9
However, the increasing utilization of telegraphy also in diplomatic relations soon created stronger
demands in terms of secrecy in comparison with trade and commerce, since host Countries frequently
intercepted diplomatic correspondence of ambassadors and military attachés with their respective
governments, in secret agreement with public or private boards managing the telegraphic service.
The interest in knowing - in peacetime and especially when war was drawing near - the contents
of diplomatic correspondence led to the creation, in some European countries, of new ‘black
chambers’, like those in vogue during the previous centuries to examine mail . The need for
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greater security led to creating very bulky codes, usually difficult to rebuild by interceptors.
Since the early years of application of electric telegraphy in the military domain, attempts to
intercepting enemy dispatches by tapping telegraph lines were frequently undertaken. Yet, difficult
access to transmission infrastructure and connected risks impacted on the feasibility of that kind
of operations. In order to protect the secrecy of military dispatches transmitted over public,
dedicated or field networks, various kinds on codes and ciphers were adopted, including in some
circumstances, versions of the commercial codebooks mentioned above.
The situation changed radically with the introduction of radiotelegraphy or TSF (Télégraphie
sans Fil) generating large volumes of correspondence that could be easily intercepted due to the
inherent features of the new transmission medium. The impact of radio communications on the
war Intelligence has occurred well before WWI. For instance, in May 1905, during the Russian -
Japanese War, the Russian Admiral commanding the fleet coming from the Baltic Sea and heading
towards Vladivostok, ordered to maintain radio silence with the purpose of remaining hidden to
the Japanese. For this purpose, once discovered by an enemy patrol boat, he decided to avoid

with Turkey broke out in 1911, the management of the station was transferred from the Ministry of Post and Telegraph to the
Ministry of the Navy.
8 The San Paolo Station was equipped with a Poulsen 100 kW arc transmitter working at a wavelength of approximately
10.000 m.
9 C. Colavito, Telegrafi e Telegrafisti del Risorgimento, Aracne, Roma 2014, p.352 e s.
10 D. P. Nickles, Under the wire, How the Telegraph changed Diplomacy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2003.

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