Page 250 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

roMeI’s dIsPaTches
In the late autumn of 1917 Figl intercepted some radio dispatches transmitted by General Giovanni
Romei who, he believed like Ronge, was the head of the Italian Mission at the Romanian
Headquarters . On the contrary, Romei had taken up the position of Head of the Italian
54
Mission in Russia in April 1916, and at the end of the following year he resided at the Russian
Headquarters (Stavka of Mogilev) or in nearby cities such as Kyiv, where he had received
the SI codebook in the previous summer. The head of the Mission in Romania, on the other
hand, was General Alberto Peano from 19 August 1917 .
55
Romei usually forwarded his reports to the Italian Supreme Command by courier or, in
some cases, by military telegraph service. In November 1917, however, following the
revolutionary unrest, these means of communication became irregular and unreliable. He
therefore asked General Peano the permission to transmit by the Romania mission radio,
from 17 to 20 November, just over ten radiograms, some of which consisted of many pages,
that the Austro-Hungarians intercepted. He then refrained from using the radio because
of limitations imposed by Peano on the number and length of telegrams, but also due to
availability of alternative transmission means .
56
Without specifying the date, Figl said he had ‘completely broken’ the SI code with the help
of the radiograms signed by General Romei about the events on the Romanian-Russian front.
He claimed he had achieved form these telegrams useful information at a time when other
sources such as Russian radio transmissions had become scarce, because of the troubles in
the Russian army .
57
It should be firstly noticed the huge difficulty of reconstructing the entirety of a two-part
code with 20,000 or more words using a few, albeit long, cryptograms, even if the correct
interpretation of a thousand terms is enough to decrypt non-complex texts. Moreover, it is
also quite clear that the time the information obtained from Romei’s dispatches remained
valid was rather short, while Figl and Ronge eventually allude to a longer period. In any case,
this undertaking represents a clear demonstration of the Figl cryptologic high skill.
In December, regardless of the Austro-Hungarian interceptions, some Officers of the Italian
Mission in Russia informed the Supreme Command that the SI code had probably fallen into
the hands of the Russian revolutionaries of Petrograd, as it resulted from news published in
some Russian newspapers and achieved from an encrypted wire telegram exchanged between
members of the Italian Mission, in Moscow and on the front. Consequently, the code had to
be “modified immediately to avoid our secret telegrams from being decoded” .
58
In fact, on 22 December, the Cryptographic Unit “drafted and distributed the replacement
tables for the SI code” which gradually came into force starting from the first days of
59

54 O. Horak, Oberst a.D. Andreas Figl, op. cit., p. 206 - 207. Ronge mentioned the SI code for the first time in his memoirs
when he referred to the end of 1917 and said the Italian Military Mission in Romania used it (M. Ronge, Der Radiohorch,
op. cit., p.25).
55 General Giovanni Romei Longhena’s telegraphic correspondence from Russia began on 3 May 1916, and continued until
August 1918, when he was recalled back to the Italian front. AUSSME, Series E11, env.89 and s.
56 The messages are collected in AUSSME, Series E11, env.97, while the documents related to the shipping difficulties and
the agreement with Peano can be found in AUSSME, Series E11, env.92.
57 O. Horak, Oberst a.D. Andreas Figl, op. cit., p. 206 - 207.
58 Promemoria all’Ufficio Operazioni di Guerra e Affari Generali (Memorandum of War Operations and general business
Office) no. 265011, 12 December 1917.
59 Section R Logs, Series B1, 101 S Vol. 307d. For instance, the A.ENV station in Padua demanded authorization to use the
new SI code by a Telegramma all’Ufficio Operazioni del Comandi Supremo del 15 gennaio 1918, (Telegram to Operation

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