Page 158 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

confidential correspondence between them and the President of the Council of Ministers. When
General Porro had asked to use a special system for that kind of correspondence, the President
of the Council of Minister Antonio Salandra sent him the FT Code, which “has never been used
before and is not available to any other authority” .
5
Several other codes with a different degree of dissemination, in use by the Italian army during the
early months of the war, can be precisely listed being held by Encoding Service of the Supreme
Command. They include the Mengarini code, the Minerva Code, the CU edited by the Ministry
of the Interior and the K15 of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs .
6
The already mentioned Mengarini code - a one-part paged code - had been modified by the Army
long before the war and its frequently used 1913 edition was often mentioned as M13 . The Austro-
7
Hungarian acquisition of this commercial code helped them in decrypting messages, although in
some cases skilful over-encoding made analysts’ work long and complex.
Even if the use of commercial codes to protect military
radio dispatches must be severely censured, yet it exists
at least an example of such codes, adapted to military
purposes, which eventually remained unbroken during
the war. The Minerva Code, on the free market since
1904, was mentioned by Ronge only once amongst the
codes used by the Italians in 1916, with a question mark
in brackets .
8
The Minerva Code is a paged code of 571 pages containing
more than 50,000 words, including the names of several
plants, banks, and companies. The Encoding Services of
the Supreme Command received a version of this code
integrated with “several military and geographical terms”
(Minerva T), in September 1915 . In December of the same
9
year, the Commander of the Special Corps deployed to
Albania, General Emilio Bertotti, received the code, now
called M.A.B., together with instructions to employ it only
for direct correspondence with the Supreme Command
Chief of Staff . The Guardia di Finanza began using
10
the Minerva Code in August 1918, as evident from the
8.1 Cover of the Minerva code (8x12 cm) correspondence between different units . Despite the code
11

5 Secretariat of the Chief of Staff, Cipher Section, (Telegram to H.E. Salandra), 28 October 1915, signed General Porro;
President of the Council of Ministers, Subject: Shipping of codes, extremely confidential registered mail, Re.no. 549, 28
October 1915, AUSSME, Series E2, env.26. Due to their limited spread, this kind of codes were not found in AUSSME and
in other Archives.
6 News regarding the Encoding Service reported in this paragraph were for the most part taken from the documents of the
Section in AUSSME, Series F1, env.108. The list of ciphers as of 30 June is in the Comunicazione di Servizio per gli Ufficiali
addetti al Servizio Cifra (Service communications for officers assigned to the encoding service) issued on the same day.
7 The Encoding Office was also in possession of the 1898 and 1904 editions of the Mengarini codebooks.
8 M. Ronge, Die Radiohorch, op. cit., p. 52a.
9 Supreme Headquarters, Secretariat, Encoding Service, Comunicazione di Sevizio 62, Cifrario Minerva T, 26 September
1915, AUSSME, Series F4, env.198. A copy of the entire Minerva Code was donated to the Author by Filippo Sinagra.
10 Secretariat of the Chief of Staff, Trasmissione di cifrario (Transmission of a code), 1 November 1915, AUSSME, Series
E2, env.16.
11 Territorial legion of the Royal Guardia di Finanza of Milan, Cifrari militari in uso presso la R. Guardia di Finanza (Military
Ciphers used by the Guardia di Finanza), 24 February 1917, AUSSME, Series F2, env.17; Diari Sezione U, 7 August 1918,
AUSSME, Series B1,101D, Vol.362d.

156