Servizio Informazioni Militare

The Servizio Informazioni Militari was instituted in October 1925 under the Fascist regime. The SIM had its headquarters at Forte Braschi, in the Quarter Q. XIV Trionfale, within the Municipio XIV.[4] Within ten years, SIM evolved from a purely military intelligence and counter-intelligence service into a modern comprehensive structure capable of offering full intelligence coverage on domestic and overseas issues. In 1934 funds available to the new service were doubled, as also was the number of specialised sections and personnel.[5]

During the second half of 1930s the activities of SIM, in particular under the leadership of Mario Roatta, took a rather sinister direction: SIM was implicated in an impressive chain of crimes and acts of violence, including the assassination of the most active anti-Fascist exile, Carlo Rosselli, together with his brother Nello, on 9 June 1937. SIM was also behind the assassination in Marseille of King Alexander of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou.

SIM experienced its greatest interwar successes during the Ethiopian Campaign and the Spanish Civil War, managing to cut off the flow of arms to both Ethiopia and the Spanish Republic and providing the Italian command with a complete picture of the enemy forces.[6]

During World War II SIM, whose sphere of action was generally limited to military objectives, is credited with operational efficiency. This included the forecasting of the Allied landing in North Africa, a contingency not considered by the Abwehr.[7] However, this service often was not consulted by Mussolini and the military hierarchy.

SIM was dissolved in 1944 and was replaced for a few years by a small intelligence office within the General Staff. Only in 1949 did the Allies allow the service to be re-established as SIFAR.

SIM elements committed a whole series of crimes. On the direct order of Mussolini SIM arranged the assassination of the Rosselli brothers. The murder was carried out by French fascist-leaning and anti-communist Cagoulards, in exchange for 100 semiautomatic Beretta rifles and the promise of future shipments.[11][12] Before the start of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War SIM supplied Ethiopians with faulty gas masks. During the Spanish Civil War it sunk Spanish Republican ships by loading explosives in the holds and it introduced bacteria in food destined for Spain in order to spread epidemics.

SIM was subordinate to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for the performance of strictly military functions and to the Undersecretary of War for the performance of duties of a non military nature.[13] SIM had five major sections:

• Sezione Calderini (espionage)
• Sezione Bonsignore Calderini (counterespionage)
• special services (sabotage and assassination)
• cryptology
• assessments[14]

In 1934 Mussolini doubled SIM's budget to fund a greatly expanded effort against Great Britain and to permit SIM to add assassination and subversion to its activities.[6] During World War II SIM had over 300 officers, 1,200 noncommissioned officers and specialists, and directed the activities of more than 9,000 secret agents spread abroad.

SIM was very active in the interwar period. It oversaw support for Croatian Ustaše and Macedonian nationalists in Yugoslavia and arranged the assassination of Alexander I of Yugoslavia during a visit to France (1934).

By the mid-1930s Italian counterespionage, led by Colonel Santo Emanuele, had been involved in France through the Cagoule, taking advantage with great skill in the opportunities this provided to penetrate the Deuxième Bureau.[15] Information obtained by SIM in France enabled Italian authorities to arrest the members of a French spy ring in Italy in 1939.[15]

Before the Ethiopian campaign SIM secured the text of the secret Hoare–Laval Pact, which sanctioned an Anglo-French agreement for the partition of Ethiopia among France, Britain and Italy on the eve of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. The surfacing of the draft of this pact brought about its failure and the resignation of both Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval and the subsequent start of unilateral Italian military operation for the conquest of Ethiopia. A. J. P. Taylor argued that it was the event that "killed the League of Nations".[16]

Cesare Amè

The biggest Italian intelligence victory scored during World War II was the acquisition of U.S. encipherment tables obtained through the break in of the U.S. Embassy in Rome in September 1941 authorized by General Cesare Amè, head of the SIM. These tables were used by U.S. Ambassadors worldwide to communicate back to Washington, D.C. In October 1940, Colonel Bonner Fellers was assigned as military attaché to the U.S. embassy in Egypt and was to report to his American superiors the details of British military activities in the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. The British, hoping to eventually get the Americans into the war against the Axis powers, were very accommodating to Fellers giving him nearly full access to British operations in North Africa. Fellers, who was something of an Anglophobe, usually authored his dispatches in a less than favorable manner casting great doubt about the long term success of the British and her Commonwealth allies fight against the Italo-German army in North Africa. His reports were read by Franklin D. Roosevelt, the head of American intelligence, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Using the encipherment tables the Italian SIM was able to decipher Fellers’ communiques with Washington in a matter of hours often gleaning important information about the British in North Africa such as its current positions, sustained losses, expected reinforcements, current supply situation, future plans, morale, etc. which it quickly reported to the Italian and German military in North Africa. The leak ended on June 29, when Fellers switched to the new U.S. code system. During the 8 months or so of reading Fellers’ dispatches to Washington, Rommel would refer to Fellers as “die gute Quelle” (the good source).[17]

Shortly before the start of World War II SIM had broke Yugoslav military codes. When, in April 1941, Italian forces were threatened by a planned Yugoslav strike, SIM operators sent coded messages to the Yugoslav divisions, ordering them to postpone the scheduled offensive and return to their start-lines. By the time the Yugoslavs realised they had been duped, the Italian defences had been restored.[18] During the occupation of Yugoslavia, the SIM turned its attention to the communications of partisan groups and by mid 1943 had solved two systems used by the Chetniks and one used by Tito’s Partisans.

SIM had a very effective cryptanalytic department that attacked foreign crypto-systems. This section was headed by General Vittorio Gamba, a published student of cryptology who had been breaking codes since World War I, and was located in Rome.[19] On average 8.000 messages were intercepted each month, 6.000 were studied and out of these 3.500 translated. The codes of several countries were attacked including France, Turkey, Romania, United States, Britain and the Vatican.

• History of espionage
• Italian intelligence agencies
• OVRA: the secret police of Fascist Italy.
• La Cagoule: French fascist-leaning and anti-communist terrorist group that regularly collaborated with SIM.
• Kenpeitai: the military police arm of the Imperial Japanese Army from 1881 to 1945.
• Tokubetsu Keisatsutai: the Imperial Japanese Navy's military police.
• Wilhelm Franz Canaris: a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944.

Notes

Bibliography