Page 196 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

many, yet not all, pages is a valuable piece of information.
However, the analysis of the notebook is underway and
will require additional time before completion.
At first sight, the notes seem to regard the theoretical aspects of
cryptography, as confirmed by the first pages on the Delastelle
ciphers and simple-transposition ciphers: mathematic formulas,
examples in French, where Sacco seem to be looking for
mathematical methods to solve transposition-based ciphers.
Beginning from page 14 entitled “AU Cipher”, Sacco
47
began to alternate theoretical pages and analysis of
intercepted ciphers, assumptions and hypotheses, practical
examples of cryptograms, which are sometimes left
unsolved and other times completely solved. Page 20
(picture 1) comprises an interesting piece of information:
in relation with the analysis of an Austrian cipher, Sacco
writes “One of them (11-16 March 1916) turned out to
consist of merely upturning the alphabet […]”. This date
confirms that, even before the Spring of 1916, Sacco could
Picture 1
decrypt Austrian dispatches but results, perhaps noted in
other papers, have not been found.

a lIsT of known eneMy cIPhers

The following page shows a list 18 Austrian, German, and Turkish codes and ciphers and identifies
the type or each of them: the list is dated 18 August 1916 (picture 2). Of course, this does not mean
that he could already decrypt the messages encoded by each of those system.
The list contains a lot of interesting information. For instance, in the following pages of that
notebook, Sacco shows he knew so well the Austro-Hungarian and German naval codes, reported
in lines 1 and 13 of the list respectively, that he also analysed them for statistical purposes.

Picture 2

47 Pages were not numbered originally. Page numbering was added by the authors.

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