Page 314 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

water , in addition to the usual information on the effects of artillery fire and its ‘correction’, and on
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the movements of troops. The shortage of flour forced to resort to the “reserves of the population”
in Veneto to alleviate the meal issues among soldiers. Collected information concerned even the
“lice removal” practices within the German divisions of the 14 Army before they returned to
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Germany .
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In the intercepted conversations, reference was sometimes made to the propaganda activity the Italians
were carrying out more and more effectively, especially to soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
belonging to ethnic groups other than German. On 18 May, the Intelligence Office of the 6 Army
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intercepted a phonogram of the enemy Intelligence Service saying that “the Italians have 4 or 6 Czech
prisoners who have volunteered to work on the Italian front. Their task is to invite the Austro-Hungarian
troops to desert by singing the Czech national songs and thus suborn their own countrymen” . The
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Czech volunteers became, by the end of the war, an entire combat division at the Italian-Austrian front.
Launching flyers from planes, balloons, etc. was one of the means of propaganda both armies
frequently used. On 29 May 1918, a conversation was intercepted about some wooden bullets
fallen beyond the Austrian lines that opened upon impact and released thousands of flyers. One of
the speakers said those bullets had landed somewhere, in places unknown to him .
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Many valuable information was also obtained for instance before and during the Second Battle of
the Piave river. Max Ronge reported that, “through telephone interception, the enemy learned even
the exact time at which it (the Austrian attack N/A) was to begin. The Ponte del Salton station in
the Grappa area had rendered this invaluable service to the Italians” .
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ITalIan counTerMeasures

Italian telephone communications were, of course, also dangerously exposed to enemy interceptions.
In August 1918, the Commander of the 2 Army, General Caviglia admitted with discourage that,
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“telephone operators feel this uncontrollable need to chat. They tell the enemy everything they know or
believe to know. All the instructions given to prevent them from following this behaviour had failed. The
only viable option was to remove most telephone equipment and send the telephone operators to fight” .
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These risks justified the increasingly rigorous technical countermeasures adopted in 1918, and the
continuous recommendations addressed to the Italian troops, like in sample of the poster shown in
picture 13.16.
Since these advices did not always prevent the abovementioned operators “uncontrollable needs”,
many technical countermeasures were taken in the summer of 1918, such the separation of the
first-line telephone networks from rear networks. Communications were only possible through
switchboards set at the limit between the two zones, at about 3 km from the trenches .
64

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58 Intelligence Office, 1 Army and 3 Corps, Notiziario N° 27, Cat. H, eavesdropping on 1 December 1917, AUSSME, Series
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E1, env.43.
59 Intelligence Office, 4 Army, Stralcio intercettazioni (Extract form eavesdroppings), Prot.2545, 16 December 1917,
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AUSSME, Series E1, env. 297.
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60 6 Army, Category H, Intercettazioni telefoniche (Telephone eavesdroppings), AUSSME, Series F2, env.187.
61 ibidem.
62 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, p.343. This piece of information in the Ronge’ book is not coming from a primary source, but from
the book of Amelio Dupont, La battaglia del Piave, Edizioni del Littorio, Roma, 1929.
63 Headquarters, 8 Army, General Staff, Telefoni per le comunicazioni, op. cit.
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64 Supreme Headquarters, Circular letter no.12829, 20 august 1918; Chief Inspector, STM, Circular Letter no.37880, 23
August 1918, ISCAG, Coll. 232. To avoid creating long complex, and sometimes not adequately isolated circuits which the
enemy could intercept more easily, manual telephone switching stations had to be built between the inner and outer zone.

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