Page 340 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

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

This Office is also credited with the support given, following the first months of the conflict, to
the creation of a telephone interception service within the Armies and with the attempts to remedy
the cryptologic deficiencies undergone at the beginning of the war.
In 1915 the Italian army was, in fact, devoid of any structure devoted to interpreting the enemy
radio dispatches intercepted in large numbers, and to improving the Italian codes and ciphers. Most
of the Italian radio dispatches, except those encrypted with some codes distributed only to High
Commands, were read by Austrian analysts led by the talented cryptologist Andreas Figl.
The success achieved by the Austro-Hungarians depended on several and interrelated reasons such
as: their pre-war accurate planning, including the purchase of several Italian codes; the weakness
and age of the latter, for the most part unchanged since more than a decade; the capture of some
new Italian ciphers and instructions during the fighting; the ‘partial encoding’ adopted by the
Italians in the early days of war; and last but not least, the poor preparation of operators in Italian
encoding branches and radiotelegraphic sections.
However, soon Italian Headquarters became aware of the danger posed by radio interceptions
and systematically avoided transmitting confidential information and specially operational orders
toward subordinate units. Nevertheless, the considerable amount of dispatches available to the
Austro-Hungarian analysts - even deprived of any sensitive information - helped in breaking new
codes and ciphers, so that when, in lack of other means of communication, some units were forced
to transmit some important orders by radio, they found Austro-Hungarians more than ready to
comprehend them and to gain some cryptologic success, as during Strafexpedition in May 1916.
On the other side, to make up for the inability to decrypting the enemy radio dispatches, the
Intelligence Office created, in the spring of 1916, a cryptographic team within the radiotelegraphic
office in Codroipo (Udine), under the command of Luigi Sacco who soon began to break some
enemy ciphers.
In this regard, the chances of solving enemy codes and ciphers also depended on the radio
communication strategies and methods adopted by the opponents. In fact, it is proven that the
Austro-Hungarian Headquarters prohibited exploiting field radio stations for communicating
between units after 1915, focusing mainly on the interception of Italian dispatches. When enforced,
this strategy limited the cryptographic material available to Sacco and his team, but also severely
disadvantaged the Austro-Hungarian army when the conflict turned into a war of movement.
On several occasions, the Italians too were able to maintain ‘radio silence’ as it was possible along the
Isonzo front where, thanks to the milder climate and more comfortable environmental conditions than
in Trentino, wire connections were used almost continuously. For example, in August 1916, before the
Sixth Battle of the Isonzo, the lack of significant interceptions together with deception operations put in
place by the Italian Intelligence Office, contributed to disorienting the Austro-Hungarian Headquarters
for good. The shortage of any information achieved by radio eavesdropping before the Italian attack that
led to the conquest of Gorizia, spurred a lively debate within the Imperial Army on the usefulness of the
interception and cryptanalysis services. Similar criticism emerged the following year after the Battle of
the Bainsizza Plateau, since General Boroevic proposed to remove the entire service due to the useless
operational information it had acquired.
In the other sectors of Radio Intelligence - including interception, traffic analysis, and
radiogoniometry - the Italian army benefited from the in-depth knowledge acquired before
the conflict and from the availability of modern equipment supplied by the Italian and British
Marconi or manufactured in its plants. Thanks to the experiments in the field of radiogoniometry
conducted since 1907, the Royal army adopted this technique well before the Austro-Hungarians
and, after the first months of the conflict, succeeded in implementing a strict control on enemy
radio communications. Even before the summer of 1916, when the decrypting of the enemy radio

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