Page 148 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

did not create a specific organization to decrypt dispatches even though the tasks assigned to the
Intelligence Office in April 1915 included the the decryption - when possible - of documents taken
from the enemy . Poor cryptographic knowledge of the entire intelligence sector clearly emerged
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during the first months of war, when no officer of this sector managed to decrypt any enemy’s
encoded dispatches.
As a partial justification of the Italian Army’s lack of cryptologic knowledge, the insufficient
culture of the whole Country in this domain could be mentioned. According to David Kahn,
“Italy was about as interested in cryptology as it was in say, social reforms” . Nevertheless he
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acknowledges that at that time most other European Armies took part in the same “parade of
cryptologic ignorance”, even though some of them, namely the French, the Austrian and partly
the Russian army were more prepared than others in this field. In fact, before the war, “there was
no organized military cryptanalytic bureau in any country, except France and Austria-Hungary” .
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The same inadequacy concerns the preparation of the codes and ciphers of the Italian army. Under
the regulations in force, their creation was not a responsibility of the Intelligence Office which
had only to select the keys, as the existing ciphers were perhaps considered sufficient or because
the creation of new ciphers could presumably be assigned to another organization, which did not
actually exist.

7.5 MOBILIZATION CODES AND CIPHERS

As for most other Armies, two kinds of large diffusion cryptographic systems were in service at the
mobilization of the Italian Army, respectively for communications among high level Headquarters
and for communications with and between minor units.
Within the first category, after the war in Libya three codes had been used meeting different levels
of secrecy, depending on their dissemination: the fewer copies printed and distributed the higher the
level of secrecy achieved. The Red Code - also called the Red cover book - considerably widespread
had the lowest level of confidentiality, while the Blue Code used for reserved communications was
considered more secret. An even higher level of secrecy belonged to the Green Code reserved for
strictly secret telegrams.
The mobilization ciphers list included the Pocket Military Cipher for communications between
subordinate units.
Moreover, the radiotelegraphic sections of the Supreme Command of the Armies and of Cavalry
Units had a Service Cipher applied not only for coding service communications between radio
stations, but also to encode and decode dispatches originated by Headquarters.
The following paragraphs describe the structure of the two most common mobilization systems,
namely the Red Code and the Pocket Military Cipher. Other codes available during the mobilization
phase as well as the Service Ciphers will be discussed in the following chapter.

37 Norme generali per la costituzione e il funzionamento del Comando Supremo Unificato (General Rules for creation
and functioning of the Unified Supreme Headquarters), AUSSME, Series L3, env.48; M. G. Pasqualini, Carte segrete
dell’Intelligence italiana, Parte quinta, dal 1914 al 1918, p. 258.
38 D. Kahn, op. cit., p. 263.
39 ibidem.

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