Page 201 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER NINE

It is difficult to determine the military relevance of this message, but it is interesting that before
October 1916 Sacco could decrypt messages encoded by irregular rectangles transposition with key.

a syllabIc code
One of the following pages displays a syllabic code on the left and a short explanation on the right (picture 7).
The decrypted text reads:
BITTE UMGEHEND KARTE IN MÖGLICHST GROSSEM MASSTAB MIT DER
POLITISCHEN EINTEILUNG AUCH JENER GEBIETE SERBIEN DIES DURCH BUKAREST
FRIEDENS VERTRAG BEKAM. BITTE AUCH ALLE SONST ERLANGBAREN BEFEHL
ÜBER POLITISCHE VERWALTUNG SERBIEN VERSENDEN
(We immediately request a map in the largest possible scale, also of Serbian territories gained
through the peace treaty of Bucharest. Please, also send all orders obtained otherwise regarding
the political administration of Serbia.)
The following chapter provides some additional details on this code.

fleIssner grIlles 54
At the end of the notebook, which corresponds to the last weeks of October 1916, a section on rotating
grilles includes a lot of theory and ideas for decryption of dispatch coded by means of that tool .
55
There are only three examples of cryptograms, the first of which is shown here (picture 8). Like in
the case of transposition systems, also for Fleissner grilles Sacco provides the method to break the
cipher as well as the solution of this cryptogram. After clearing the text from some orthographic
errors and some null letters, it reads:

Picture 8

54 The rotating grilles operation will be explained in the next chapter.
55 The early pages of the notebook comprise a purely theoretical page on rotating grilles. The last pages include real
cryptograms, probably the first ones with which Sacco had to deal.

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