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The Wireless First World War: A Series

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The Wireless First World War: A Series

An annotated link post

Matt Osborne
Jan 12, 2022
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The Wireless First World War: A Series

www.polemology.net

Before radio technology was invented, an extensive military intelligence bureaucracy had already become the norm in European land armies. This was a new phenomenon in the world, one with social and political implications that became visible in the most infamous miscarriage of justice at the turn of the century.

Polemology Positions
Alfred Dreyfus and the Derp State
After their defeat in 1870-71, the French Ministry of War was determined to modernize, and naturally saw the Prussian general staff model as a starting point. In what became known as the ‘continental system,’ a series of numbered bureaux were set up to handle the administration of armies…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Because these institutions pre-existed radio, the new technology was adapted to military ends from inception. The man we credit most for this revolution worked hand-in-hand with military men all along, cooperating with them at every turn, even integrating his own stations into their nation-state surveillance systems. So it is little surprise to find the most militant minds of the early 20th Century openly admiring radio for its destructive potential.

Polemology Positions
Marconi's War on Time and Space
Guglielmo Marconi was everything people were supposed to admire in the late 19th Century. A globetrotting son of privilege at time when empires were snatching up the last unclaimed bits of land on earth, he wanted to conquer an invisible country that had only recently been discovered: “electromagnetism.” After years of learning by experiment, Marconi wa…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Because pre-existing bureaucracies saw the usefulness of radio intelligence before the war, systems of surveillance and code-breaking were already in place before the war broke out. Indeed, it was the Italians who set everything in motion with their aggressive pursuit of an imperial renaissance at the expense of the Ottomans. The first land war to produce significant signal traffic also inspired the Balkan uprising that led to pan-European war.

Polemology Positions
The Electric Wind of Europe
The French Army recovered from the defeat of 1870-1871 by modernizing in its image of the German victors. That is, anything they deemed a German advantage in the previous war would become the model for new doctrine and departments built on French lines to prepare for the next war. Because the German war machine had such a “scientific” reputation, at lea…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Then, in the famous July Crisis, radio acted as a lubricant on the slippery slope to war. Signals were intercepted, spurring other signals, which were intercepted in turn, spurring further signals in a feedback loop of decision. If we were to write the First World War as a streaming cable series, the episode in which the war breaks out would be a radio play.

Polemology Positions
The Wireless First World War
Let us imagine the outbreak of the Great War as a series of signaling episodes, a play in three acts. Information does not necessarily lead to action. Indeed, high volumes of information can also account for inaction. In the middle of the “July Crisis,” when all of Europe teetered on the brink of apocalypse, the new prime minister of France was unable to…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Having played an outsize role in the outbreak of war, radio and radio intelligence played a central role in the formation of the stalemate that followed. Start on the Western Front, where German army communications were weak and the French SIGINT game very strong, providing a force multiplier to stop Germany at the Marne.

Polemology Positions
Wireless War on the Western Front
According to historian Holger Herwig, airplanes like the one above were solely responsible for the French victory on the Marne in 1914, halting the German juggernaut short of Paris. My skepticism is based on the planes themselves. Early aircraft like that one picture above had less horsepower than your average lawn mower, and about the same size of gas …
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Then consider the weakest of the Central Powers, indeed the feeblest of the major combatants, and the crucial role of radio SIGINT in forestalling their defeat by both Russia and Italy. Without “the great secret” of the imperial and royal army, the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have fallen in 1915.

Polemology Positions
Wireless and the Slow Death of Austria-Hungary
Conrad von Hötzendorf was an objectively bad commander-in-chief, one of the worst generals in a war known for terrible leadership. It was hard enough that his army spoke a dozen languages. Much like the patchwo…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Third, radio SIGINT was essential to the German victory at Tannenberg and the ensuing campaign around the Masurian Lakes that expelled the Russian army. By 1915, the Russian general staff was saddled with failures and desperately seeking scapegoats for them. This was the beginning of the end for the Tsar, with all that implied for the 20th Century.

Polemology Positions
Wireless War on the Eastern Front
When the Imperial Russian Army set out to invade East Prussia in 1914, there were few communication options for the force attacking out of Poland. Roads were a mess in good weather and impossible in bad weather. Telephone and telegraph lines were deemed too vulnerable. Gen. Alexander Samsonov, commander of the 2nd Army, decided to rely on his headquarte…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Fourth, we turn to the British experience, in which radio SIGINT was developed as a secret weapon against Germany at sea. Thankfully, we have a rare memoir from someone who was there, and who carried over that program into the Second World War.

Polemology Positions
SCIF Life: A.G. Denniston and Room 40
Alexander Guthrie Denniston was an expert in German literature teaching at the British Navy’s Osborne prep school when the First World War broke out. Offering his services to the Admiralty, he was swiftly enrolled in a new, secret program directed by the First Lord himself, Winston Churchill. Housed in Room 40 of the Old Building at Whitehall, the proje…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

In 1917, the youngest global empire came to Europe and learned the radio SIGINT game very fast, mainly from the French. To coax the Americans into the conflict, British intelligence had spent years propagandizing Americans with sanitized SIGINT.

Polemology Positions
The Wireless War Comes to America
According to the headline on the afternoon edition of the Providence Journal, 29 April 1915, the German embassy was about to warn passengers against sailing on the Lusitania. The very next day, Count Johann Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, put an advertisement in American newspapers warning passengers not to sail …
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a year ago · 1 like · Matt Osborne

Finally, the American doughboys were not content to simply imitate their teachers. Instead, they invented mobile SIGINT infrastructure that could keep up with the new, motorized battlefield.

Polemology Positions
Americans Invented the SIGINT Vehicle
Goniometry is the science of radio direction finding. All electromagnetic energy has polarity, and that polarity can be detected. The funny-looking antenna on the truck right there is designed to detect the compass bearing of radio energy sources. When Americans arrived in France during 1917, the French introduced them to the technologies and systems th…
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a year ago · Matt Osborne

Of course, this series has not covered the topic in full. There are millions of stories in radio warfare, these are just a few of them. Stay tuned!

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The Wireless First World War: A Series

www.polemology.net
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