Page 16 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

and the significant contributions delivered by other entities belonging to the Italian Supreme
Command, such as the Situation Office.

objecTIves
Therefore, it seems useful to analyze the various aspects of the entire Italian army Intelligence
during the war, including its organisational structure and performance which, still today, are subject
of debates, raise questions and lead to conflicting assessments. Our goal is not to perpetuate sterile
discussions, but rather to investigate the real results achieved by that service, especially on the eve
of the most important war events.
In addition, it seems appropriate to describe the development process of the Intelligence branches
before WWI, also to dispute studies that have frequently underestimated it and to show how the pre-war
organization and experiences affected the Intelligence results, especially in the first period of the conflict.
The other main purpose of the volume concerns the development of the Italian army COMINT
and its contribution to Intelligence as well as the activities aimed at protecting the integrity of
communication and information channels from the enemy’s intrusion attempts. This study includes
an in-depth analysis of the origin, evolution and results of the Italian Cryptographic Unit as well as
a description of codes and ciphers used by the Italian army, trying to distinguish which were not
compromised during the war and the time required to break some of the remaining ones.
The real technical and operational conditions concerning telecommunications and cryptology,
on both sides of the front, in October 1917, are investigated in depth with the aim of verifying
the validity of the well-known, severe judgment regarding Italian cryptography expressed by the
Commissione d’inchiesta su Caporetto (Commission of enquiry on the Battle of Caporetto) in its
final report, which several publications on the topic often mentioned until recently.
More in general, the extraordinary qualitative and quantitative developments in radio communication
systems are examined also with the purpose of clarifying the close correlation between their
evolution and the COMINT results.
Finally, we could not but include an analysis of the Intelligence contribution originated from
telephone interceptions on both sides of the front, illustrating the methods and the technical means
implemented as well as the results achieved.

conTenTs

The first chapter of the book summarises the debates that have arisen after the end of the war -
and continued until today - on the effectiveness of the Italian army’s Intelligence Service and its
Communication Intelligence and Security.
The remaining part of the book is divided into two parts. The first one, written by Filippo Cappellano,
exposes the story of the Italian Intelligence from the second half of the nineteenth century up to
1918.
Cosmo Colavito wrote the second part concerning the history of the technologies and activities
relating to COMINT and COMSEC, from the mobilisation period up to the end of the conflict.
This part includes a contribution by Paolo Bonavoglia, Luigi Sacco’s grandson, who explains the
content of some pages written by his grandfather in a personal notebook during the summer and
the autumn of 1916.
Some passages of this volume illustrate the link between COMINT and what we today call
HUMINT (Human Intelligence), including interrogations of prisoners and deserters, examination
of documents taken from the enemy in various ways, etc. One of the relations between these two

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