Page 165 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER EIGHT

the dispatch was in Red Code, according to Figl’s memoirs two dispatches seem to have been
intercepted on 5 July having the same content and partially encoded with the Red Code and with
the Service Cipher, respectively .
33
On the contrary, Italian documents include the statement of the Officer who oversaw the fixed
radio station in Verona informing the Chief Inspector of the STM about the intercepted radiogram
transmitted by Medea with “no ciphering”. Urged to respond, on 29 July the Medea radio station
explained it had “sent the radiogram on 25 [July] at 10.45, as per enclosed copy (picture 8.4),
which had been encoded with the Service Cipher used by radiotelegraphic station”. It also pointed
out that supervising radio communications was not - according to the regulations in force - a
responsibility pertaining to the Verona station, but to the stations of Udine and Treviso .
34
The truth about this matter has never been ascertained. According to what the Officer in charge of
the Verona station declared, the dispatch might have been transmitted as plaintext, also because
the copy displayed in picture 8.4 shows no underlining nor does it contain expressions such as ‘to
be encoded entirely’ .
35
In conclusion, according to Italian documents, the dispatch might have been encoded with the
Service Cipher or transmitted as plaintext. After all, radiotelegraphic stations, including the Medea
station, did not have the Red Code and there would be no reasonable motive for General Cadorna
and Porro, or their staff, to carry this code with them when leaving Udine.
The discrepancy between the Italian sources and Figl’s and Ronge’s versions obviously increases
due caution when evaluating the various episodes regarding the decryption of Italian dispatches
for the rest of the war period.

ITalIan aTTeMPTs aT IMProvIng securITy
Coding confidential messages by means of scarcely widespread codes such as the Green Code and,
until April 1916, by the Letter Service Cipher - which had not been broken by the Austrians - can
be considered as an effective defensive measure.
Moreover, after the “careless conduct” at Medea, the Supreme Command repeatedly recalled the
prohibition to transmit operational orders via radio, ordering to utilize radiotelegraphy only in
the lack of any other communication means and, in any case, never to convey important military
information. This rule was more strictly applied for communications from High Commands to the
front, as they contained operational and tactical information, and less severely for the dispatches
transmitted in the opposite direction.
In fact, Ronge admits that the Italians, differently from the Russians, “did not disseminate the
decisions that they were adopting via radio” . On the other hand, he stresses the Austrians’ ability
36
to infer interesting information about the deployed Italian forces, their movements, etc. also from
intercepted radiograms not containing confidential news. For instance, “the movements of cavalry

33 O. Horak, Oberst a.D. Andreas Figl., op. cit., p. 97.
rd
34 Letter of the 1 3 KW station to the Telegraphic Inspector of the 3 Army in Cervignano with the following object: Servizio
st
della stazione RT di Medea, 29 luglio 1915 (Service of radiotelegraphic station Medea, 29 July 1915) and other relevant
correspondence, AUSSME, Series E2, env.19.
35 Chiefs of radiotelegraphic stations were ordered to encode underlined words only (Operations Division, Communication
to Army Headquarters and Headquarters of the Carnia region. Object: radiotelegraphic communications service, op. cit.). In
this case, Porro himself or Cadorna dictated the telegram and the person writing it might have omitted to underline the words
to be ciphered, thus leading the telegraphists to think that no underlining implied the order to not coding anything.
36 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, op. cit., p. 178.

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