Page 162 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

evident that the keys used by the Plotters were not ordered and therefore the system results more
resilient to decryption compared to the Service Cipher. No one knows whether Austrian analysts
retained some memories about the Plotters’ Cipher, which perhaps had been broken by their
ancestors.
On the contrary, there is no evidence that the letter cipher delivered on 6 August 1915 to “the
mobile stations of the 2 and 3 Armies and to the Supreme Command” could be broken until
rd
nd
April of 1916, since no reference was reported by the Austrian sources and the instructios clearly
ordered to apply this chipher only to “short or confidential messages. In all other instances, the
figures cipher shall be used” .
22
More generally, trying to reduce opportunities for violation by the enemy, Service Ciphers
underwent most of changes and had the highest number of versions compared to other codes
adopted by the Italian army during the war, as facilitated by their small-size and relatively small
number of copies.

8.2 AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EARLY SUCCESSES

The fIrsT decryPTIons

Immediately after entering the war, Andreas Figl, fresh from the success achieved on the Russian
front and proficient in Italian, was deployed to the Italian front, where he started organizing
interpretation of radiotelegraphic dispatches. The original Headquarters for this activity was in
Maribor, currently in Slovenia . In August 1915, a service reorganization took place, with three
23
decryption centres set up at the Headquarters of Bolzano, Villaco and Adelsberg, called Penkala,
a name afterword extended to the whole cryptographic service. The dispatches that could not be
decrypted by Penkalas were sent to the Nachrichtenabt (Intelligence Service) in Vienna .
24
From 5 to 21 June, Figl seized four radiograms addressed to Massawa from the Coltano station, near
Pisa, coded by the VT Telegraphic Dictionary of the Italian Royal navy. The Austro-Hungarians
had already the code ironically called VerTrauen (trust) .
25
On 21 June, the first Italian dispatch coded through the Service Cipher appeared: an absolute
novelty, as it was unknown to Figl and his colleagues. Breaking the first version of the cipher
required a hard work and was initially just partial .
26
Regarding the first two changes to the cipher keys, Ronge points out that:

on 10 July there was already a modification to the cipher (addition of the first key to the service
cipher, A/N): after being distressed with the old version, we had to find the key to the new one
[…]. By 12 August we could decode 12 telegrams and the new key, completely explained, was
transmitted to the Headquarters of the armies .
27

22 Chief Inspector of STM, Historical and Military Journal, Service order No.20, of 6 August 1915, AUSSME, Series B1,105
S, vol.87.
23 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, op. cit., p. 177 - 178.
24 M. Ronge, Der Radiohorch, op cit., p. 4. Penkala is the name of a pencil factory whose advertisement showed the head of
man with a pencil behind his big ear.
25 O. H. Horak, Oberst a.D. Andreas Figl, op. cit., p. 74, 94. M. Ronge, Der Radiohorch, op cit., p.12, 49.
26 The report concerning the solution to the cipher was written by Lieutenant Victor Reko and enclosed in M. Ronge, Der
Radiohorch, op. cit., Annex 6.
27 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, op. cit., p. 177. Numbers reported by Ronge are the same as the ones in Figl’s Memoirs which, as
a matter of fact, do no mention decrypted dispatches but, dispatches that had been “delivered to the Intelligence Service” for

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