Page 286 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

enumerate other significant codes and ciphers dealt with in following pages. Moreover, he barely
mentioned the activities and the successes of the Italian Cryptographic Unit, just explaining that
the methods used by Austro-Hungarian and Italian cryptanalysts were almost identical.
It may also be newsworthy to report the reasons that led O. Marchetti - the Head of the Italian
Army Intelligence Service - to draft this letter, where he emphasized the statements of some
Austrian Officials for urging the Ministry of War “to take immediate measures to protect
cryptographic secrecy and to reorganise that special service” in a post war period when the
importance of military cryptography was probably underestimated. The statement that “the
aforementioned information is significant [...] in the light of current dangers that must be
addressed as quickly as possible” confirms the above purpose . In fact, the Kingdom of
90
Serbians, Croats, and Slovenians - which later became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia - born
from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had inherited a part of the Penkalas of the
Austrian army. Keeping the guard up by avoiding the reduction of personnel or even the
disbandment of a Cryptographic Unit was a must.
Most probably, Marchetti himself could not have expected that his letter would end up in the
hands of the Commission of enquiry, and perhaps for this very reason, he vehemently attacked the
judgment of the Commission in his book arguing that:

through radio-goniometric detection, the enemy could pinpoint our stations and make
assumptions on the location of our higher echelons. However, we did or were able to do the
same, just as we knew some of the enemy ciphers and found, or could extract their variable
keys, in the same way as we obtained information from the radiotelegraphic interceptions, we
had been familiar with for a long time. It was not perfection, not at all; but we were not in that
terrible state of inferiority that the Commission of enquiry suggested .
91

reMarks on The rePorT of The coMMIssIon
After describing the difficulties of the Austrian interception and cryptanalysis service during the
advance from the Isonzo to the Piave, any comments on the kind words the Commission spent on
the “excellent enemy services” would seem useless. The same could be said about the even less
rational and unbalanced note attached to those words, even if some remarks seem appropriate in
this respect.
With reference to radio-goniometry and traffic analysis, it is undeniable that they helped
the Austro-Germans collect information about the movements of the Italian Headquarters.
However, based on the information regarding the activities of the 1 radio-goniometric
st
Section during the redeployment and the First Battle of the Piave river, it is reasonable to
recognise at least comparable capabilities on both sides of the front. Moreover, under those
circumstances, the Austro-Germans had the possibility to make fewer detection attempts than
the Italians, as these last suffered the problematic conditions of the withdrawal imposing
limitations on the use of wireless communications and relied, as far as possible, on the
landlines available in the crossed areas.
Regarding the security of Italian radio-communications until the end of November 1917, when
the Italians returned to wires:

90 Intelligence Service, Attività dei Reparti crittografici op. cit., p. 2.
91 O. Marchetti, op. cit., p.182.

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