Page 345 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CONCLUSIONS

These new devices appeared to be the ultimate solution because a ‘brute force’ cryptanalysis did not
seem an effective option for breaking the coding mechanism, thanks to the extremely high number of
combinations the rotors were capable of. The myth of unbreakable rotor machines lasted for many years!
Furthermore, the need to protect wire and wireless telephone communications clearly emerged
during the war, also because the progress in two-way radiotelephony allowed, at the western front,
voice communications among mobile platforms - such as planes and tanks - and between them
and their commands, preparing the ground for an epochal change in conducting field operations .
10
Telephone security requirements began to be met in the twenties by means of ‘scrambling’
equipment. However, even the most complex versions of those devices implemented in the
following years did not guarantee adequate security until they were replaced with advanced
encrypting systems applied to wireless phones during World War II .
11
In short, WWI cryptology laid the foundations for following innovations, just as it happened in other
science and technology fields, including radio communications which, after overcoming some of the
limitations suffered at the beginning of the conflict, experienced exceptional diffusion and technical
progress that served as the basis of many new ‘civil’ applications in the subsequent years, such as radio
broadcasting, intercontinental telephone communications and airborne radio navigation .
12
The parallelism between the development of telecommunications and that of cryptology is not accidental
at all, not only because the innovation in both sectors will be largely due to the developments in
electromechanical and then in electronic technologies, but mainly for the close correlation between
the evolution of the two technologies: from telegraphy to telephony, from radio communications to the
Internet, until both disciplines merged into the broader digital environment of the present times.

In the years after the end of the war, the role of the COMINT, and more generally of Signal Intel-
ligence (SIGINT), grew thanks to the potential demonstrated on the battlefields of WWI.
In addition to preserving, despite some downsizing, the structures dedicated to the Intelligence and
Security of Telecommunications - implemented at the cost of enormous efforts during the war - the
Armed Forces disseminated the cryptologic culture in their ranks to avoid, among other things,
the mistakes made in drafting and encoding dispatches during the conflict. To this end, learning
‘Signal Intelligence’ became part of the curriculum of the young Officers .
13
In the Italian army, Luigi Sacco continued the diffusion of that culture carried out during the conflict,
as demonstrated by the subtitle of his book Nozioni di Crittografia (Notions of Cryptography)
printed in 1925, which reveals its use as a text for the Primo Corso per Ufficiali informatori (First
Course for Intelligence Officials). The Sacco teaching activity in the Army schools pursued at
least until the 1940s .
14

10 Peter J. Hugill, Le comunicazioni mondiali dal 1944, Feltrinelli, 1999, p. 195 - 222. The Author of the book considers these
communications as the first example of tactical C (Command, Control, and Communications).
3
11 The scramblers produced by the American company Western Electric and known as A3 were replaced with a system called
SIGSALY in 1943, to protect political and military wireless telephone communications between UK and USA. Alan Turing
- who is recognised as the person who broke Enigma - contributed to SIGSALY implementation.
12 The large availability of high vacuum valves, low-cost remnants of the war, favoured the construction of cheap receivers, a
prerequisite for the rapid spread of radio broadcasting. Guglielmo Marconi’s experiments using ‘very short directional waves’
carried out in 1916, were the turning point that led to high-frequency international voice communications in the 1920s. The
radio beacons introduced in WWI will be perfected to allow air navigation at greater and greater distances.
13 For example, courses on ‘Military Codes and Ciphers’ started in 1917 at Riverbank Laboratories for U.S. Army officers,
continued after the war at the Signal Corp school in New Jersey, as shown by publications containing classes delivered by W.
F. Friedman in 1923, such as ‘Elements of Cryptanalysis’.
14 L. Sacco, Appunti di Crittografia, ottavo Corso tecnico integrativo sulle Trasmissioni, Istituto Militare Superiore delle
Trasmissioni, Rome, 1940 - 41.

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