Page 25 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER ONE

the Manual 1947 edition, Kahn restated his conviction that the Sacco book was still “the best one
volume work, on the technical aspects of cryptology. Sacco was thus a major figure in the pantheon
of cryptology” .
24
The book Systeme des Chiffrierens by Alfred Figl is mainly focused on technical issues and rarely
refers to the ciphers and codes used by the Italians and the Austrians . Figl lists several cipher
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systems and only discusses at length the weaknesses of the Italian Pocket Military Cipher, dealt
with later in this volume . It seems that the book was not translated into languages other than
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German and did not achieve international diffusion.

1.2 Luigi Sacco and Andreas Figl with their respective books

In another unpublished manuscript, probably written in 1924 and titled Kryptographischen Er-
innerungen (Cryptographic Memories), Figl describes in detail the work he did, especially at the
Italian front, to solve codes and ciphers and to decrypt enemy dispatches. There are only a few
copies left of Figl’s original script since the Germans, after the annexation of Austria to the Third
Reich, allegedly confiscated the script in the office of General Ronge, Figl’s former chief, and sent
it to Berlin where it went missing without any trace . The text of one of the copies, which includes
27
the preface written by Figl in 1947, has been elaborated in a recent book by O.J. Horak which we
will often refer to later .
28
Figl’s manuscript may be considered one of the sources for the Ronge’ book since it contains a
large amount of information about the Italian army cryptology during WWI. The detailed record
of the events allows the identification of the Italian codes and ciphers solved by the Austrians

York, 1996. In the following pages, we will refer to this last edition.
24 D. Kahn, Interviews with cryptologists, in Cipher Deavours, et alii, Cryptology: Machines, History and Methods, Artech
House, Norwood, 1989, p. 41. In his 2011 book, titled ‘Les Codes Secrets décryptés’, Didier Muller likewise wrote:‘A mon
avis, c’est le meilleur corse de cryptographie de la première moitié du XX siècle’.
25 A. Figl, Systeme des Chiffrierens (Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen des Kriminalistischen Laboratoriums der
Polizeidirektion Wien), Moser Bucchandlung, Gratz, 1926. Andreas Figl also wrote a book titled Systeme des Dechiffrierens,
whose publication was allegedly banned at the time, for security reasons.
26 ibid., p. 77, 85 and Annex 29.
27 ibid., p.42 - 56.
28 Otto J. Horak, Oberst a. D. Andreas Figl und der k.u.k. Radiohorch - und Dechiffrier dienst. Die “Kryptographischen
Erinnerungen”, Ares Verlag, Graz 2011, p. 60 - 228.

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