Page 159 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER EIGHT

length, which is almost double compared to other Italian commercial codes, its little pocketsize, due to
the very small fonts, is shown in picture 8.1.
Among the reasons why the Minerva code remained apparently unbroken, its limited dissemination
with consequent shortage of cryptographic material available to Austrian analysts, can be included.
Moreover, this code does not appear amongst those acquired by the Evidenzbureau before the war,
which once again proves the impact of those purchases on the cryptographic war.
The CU (Universal Code, not to be confused with the Minerva Code also called universal), was a
paged code published in 1913 by the Ministry of the Interior, and largely widespread in Italy and
abroad at Embassies and Consulates. The Army used it only for communications with the Ministry
of the Interior.
A specific discussion - which is beyond the purpose of this book - could concern the history of
Italian diplomatic codes of the K series, which progressed from k15 to k20 in the years between
1915 and 1918.
In summary, despite that, from the early phases of the conflict and throughout the war, some
highly confidential codes had ‘escaped’ Austrian analysts, most of the codes available in 1915
to the Army and other bodies of the State, had two characteristics in common which made them
scarcely secure, namely:
longevity, as they had been used for years, with a large probability that they were known to the
enemy,
regularity, as they mostly belonged to the category of ‘one-part paged codes’.
Moreover, the coding practices generally adopted during the first months after Italy’s entering the
war were harmful, to say the least, representing a further serious drawback.

ParTIal codIng
When the war began, radio traffic between field and fixed stations of the Army was not very
intense, despite the Supreme Command encouraging the Armies not to “neglect this communication
instrument” because it could be useful to “train the station personnel and to relieve to some
extent the telegraphic service workload of ordinary telegraphic communications” . This statement
12
demonstrates the unawareness of some members of the Supreme Command of the most basic rules
about Communication Security.
The same directive specified: “the dispatch coding is a responsibility of the sender unit; only when
the sender does not have a code and asks the help of the radiotelegraph station, the last can encode
the message by means of the Service Cipher”. Since this circumstance happened quite frequently,
many dispatches were coded by that method, even before starting to use Red Code and Pocket
Military cipher. The STM Chief Inspector - who directed all radiotelegraphic sections in the war
zone - was responsible for the Service Cipher and related keys .
13
The rules for Service Cipher employment provided to all radiotelegraphic stations, instructed
for coding exclusively “the words necessary to avoid understanding the address and text of the
dispatch” . To this purpose the transmitting Headquarters had to underline the words to be coded,
14
trying to limit the number of selected words.

12 Supreme Headquarters, Operations Divisions, Communication to Army Corps of the Carnia region, Prot. No.611, del 18
June 1915, Radiotelegraph communications service, signed by the Assistant to the Chief of Staff Porro. AUSSME, Series
F12, env.108.
13 Colonel Natalino Mazzone was the Chief Inspector of the STM and was supported by Captain Ugo Levi, who were in
charge until March 1917.
14 Chief Inspector of STM, Military History Journal - Service Order no 3, 30 May 1915, AUSSME, Series,105 S, Vol. 87.

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