Page 146 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

THE SECRET WAR ON THE ITALIAN FRONT IN WWI (1915 – 1918)

At the beginning of 1915, a major concern came from a radiotelegraphic station installed at the
Albergo Ticino - formerly known as Felix - a hotel near Chiasso. The station was neutralized
by Captain Eugenio Raimondi of the Engineering Corps Directorate of Milan, who entered the
hotel disguised as a workman and gathered the information necessary to demand - in the name of
Swiss neutrality - the Country authorities to order the station dismantling, based upon irrefutable
evidence of its espionage activities .
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7.4 “RADIO INTELLIGENCE” IN THE ITALIAN AND AUSTRIAN ARMIES

The ausTro-hungarIan arMy’s exPerIence
For a long time, even before WWI, the Austro-Hungarians had shown a large interest in listening
to radio dispatches of potential enemies with particular focus on the Italian radio political and
military communications.
The first interception operations carried out by the Imperial Royal navy aimed at detecting
the preparation of new radio stations on the Adriatic coastline, and the movements of the first
Italian warships equipped with radio systems. This activity intensified after completion of the
radiotelegraphic station in the port of Pula and between 1908 and 1909, during the critical times
of Bosnia-Herzegovina annexation to
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when the
relations with Italy, already critical due
to the well-known issue of “unredeemed”
territories, became progressively worse.
After that period, surveillance on Italian
radio correspondence was continuous
and tireless. Maximilian Ronge - a Major
then Head of the Investigative Group of
the Evidenzbureau (Kundschaft gruppe)
- tried to interpret with considerable
personal efforts a “large amounts of
foreign dispatches received and sent by
the Antivari radio station, in Montenegro,
(picture 7.7) that had been intercepted by
our (Austrian, A/N) navy” .
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Austrian eavesdropping peaked with the
Italian expedition in Libya and started 7.7 Antivari station implemented by G. Marconi in 1904 to
“on the military side, since 24 September connect Italy (Bari) and Montenegro (ISCAG Archive)
1911” . The same year, in order to speed
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stations were detected near Trento and Riva del Garda (Intelligence Office, Memorandum 599 of 22 April 1914 and 767 of 2
October 1914, AUSSME, Series F4, env.12).
31 Directorate of the Milan Engineer Corps, Stazione radiotelegrafica nell’Albergo Ticino in Chiasso (Radiotelegraphic station
in the Ticino Hotel, Chiasso), 13 February 1915, AUSSME, Series F4, env.7.
32 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, op. cit., p. 61.
33 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, op. cit. p. 62. The Investigative Team of the Evidenzbureau developed considerably in the period
before WWI, also thanks to the overall intelligence activities carried out against Italy but also in the Russian and Serbian
scenarios. In fact, the Russian and Balkan intelligence sub-groups were created soon after the Italian.

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