Page 328 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

Moreover, after the Austro-Hungarian attempt to break through the Piave/Grappa front and
their Divisions redeployment to the initial positions across the river, the efforts of the High
Commands to support the morale of the troops could hardly be successful. The effects of
the new situation also reflected in the efficiency of radio interception. Ronge stated that,
because of the proven loyalty of their Officers, the Penkalas continued to operate until the
last days of resistance to the Italian attack started on 24 October, but on the contrary the
efficiency of the listening stations had become unsatisfactory, leading to lively protests by
the Intelligence Service against the Headquarters of the Telegraphic Radio Service with a
consequent tightened discipline against telegraph operators . Some of them, captured in
31
mid-September, witnessed the discontent among their ranks, revealing that “much greater
severity has been adopted in the radio service recently, and some radiotelegraph operators
have been put on trial for not complying with the regulations [...]. The severity of discipline
is such that many radio telegraphists applied to be transferred to other units” .
32
The other factor reducing the Austro-Hungarian radio intelligence effectiveness was the
limited use of radio that the Italians did, by systematically relying on physical networks
once the front on the Piave and the Grappa had been stabilised. Ronge himself noted that, in
response to the radio silence imposed on the Austrian units in April, the Italians had adopted
a similar approach too .
33
Among the most relevant difficulties the Austrian radio decrypting service encountered in the
last months of the war, the improved resistance of Italian codes and ciphers and the greater
caution in encoding operations are worth mentioning. The steady increase in the number
of unbroken Italian new cryptographic systems and the time taken to break some others
inevitably led to a reduction in the number of dispatches that could be decrypted.
Finally, when in October 1918, the Grey Tables and the SA and SC service systems were adopted,
breaking them would have been difficult given the short time between their introduction into
service and the Austrian final withdrawal. The grip around the Austrian analysts was definitively
tightening, even if the Penkalas interpreted, until the last days of the war, some dispatches covered
by small inadequately updated ciphers.
In fact, the Austrian decrypting activity continued, until the 1 of November, to search for information
st
in a rampant flow of cryptograms protected by mostly unknown encoding systems, and generated
by the many motorised radiotelegraphic stations, accompanying the advance of Italian troops after
crossing the Piave. According to Ronge, in the last days of October, the Austrians intercepted and
correctly decrypted from twenty to thirty dispatches per day, on the whole front, in the face of
many hundreds of telegrams produced by the Italian stations .
34
The decrypted telegrams were mostly protected by coding systems not yet replaced or created
within units that had not yet abandoned their ‘dangerous traditions’. Moreover, for less confidential
communications, old encoding systems were still used to reduce to a minimum the cryptographic
material with new codes supplied to the enemy.

31 M. Ronge, Der Radiohorch, op. cit., p.40 - 41.
th
32 Headquarters, 6 Army, Intelligence Office, Riassunto di vari interrogatori fatti ai Telegrafisti addetti alla stazione di
intercettazione “SPETELF” N. X. catturati in Val Brenta il giorno 14 corrente, (Summary of questionings Telegraphists
working in no. X SPETELF station, seized in val Brenta on 14 September), September 22, 1918. Spetelf was the Austrian
Army name for their Telephone Interception Service.
33 M. Ronge, Der Radiohorch, op. cit., p.31.
34 M. Ronge, Der Radiohorch, op cit. Annexes from 75 to 78 contain the Italian messages the Austrians focused on between
October 26 and November 1.

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