ETHEL & ROSENBERG, JULIUS 1915-1953 - 1918-1953

Executed "atomic spies

Convicted by Circumstance,

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for their alleged roles in passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. No hard evidence against them was offered at their trial, although they had been implicated by several of their coconspirators, including Ethel's brother David Greenglass and Max Elitcher, a college classmate of Julius's. The Rosenbergs maintained their innocence throughout their trial. The fact that they were convicted on circumstantial evidence and the severity of their sentence indicate how seriously Americans took two of the greatest fears of the 1950s: communism and the atomic bomb.

A Communist Couple

Julius Rosenberg met his future wife, Ethel Greenglass, at a 1936 New Year's Eve benefit for the International Seamen's Union. Ethel was a strong union sympathizer, and she found that she and Julius held many political views in common. Julius, a student in electrical engineering at City College of New York, had joined the Young Communist League in 1934. After he graduated college in 1939, the couple married and moved into a small Brooklyn apartment. Soon Julius found work as an engineer inspector for the U.S. Army Signal Corps. For a while the Rosenbergs were active participants in the Communist party. They brought Ethel's younger brother David into the party and, later, David's wife Ruth. But after Ethel had a child in 1943, the Rosenbergs dropped out of the party and appeared to fall into a simple, domestic life.

A Spy Ring Discovered

David Greenglass was stationed as a machinist at Los Alamos, New Mexico, the site of the first atomic bomb test, during the Manhattan Project. On 15 June 1950 Greenglass confessed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he had passed information about the project to Harry Gold, a Swiss immigrant. Gold had already confessed to conspiring with Dr. Karl Fuchs, a high-level atomic scientist on the Manhattan Project, to pass atomic secrets to the Soviets. Greenglass also claimed that he had handed over documents to his twenty-six-year-old sister, Ethel, and her husband Julius Rosenberg. The next day FBI agents showed up at the Rosenbergs' apartment.

The Noose Tightens

Julius Rosenberg told the agents that his brother-in-law was a liar. His refusal to cooperate convinced the FBI that he was hiding something and that they were about to uncover a spy ring of unprecedented importance. Intensifying and broadening its investigation, the bureau found Max Elitcher, who told agents that Rosenberg had approached him various times during the mid 1940s attempting to obtain classified information to which Elitcher had access through his work with air force and navy contracts. The FBI felt it now had its case.

Questionable Procedures

On 17 August 1950 a federal grand jury indicted the Rosenbergs for conspiracy to commit espionage. Lack of direct evidence kept them from being charged with the more serious crime, treason. Their trial began on 6 March 1951 with Morton Sobell, who had been implicated by Elitcher as Rosenberg's accomplice, as the third defendant. The hysterical publicity and questionable procedures of prosecutor Irving Saypol compromised the fairness of the trial. Saypol told the jury that "the evidence of the treasonable acts of these three defendants you will find overwhelming," even though the defendants were not accused of treason. During the trial the prosecutor announced in a national news conference that he had secured sworn affidavits from an old friend of the Rosenbergs's, William Perl, which conclusively proved the conspiracy. Saypol decided against putting Perl on the stand, however, when Perl admitted to lying in his affidavits.

Incriminating Flights

One by one, Greenglass, his wife, Gold, and Elitcher took the stand and testified that the Rosenbergs were involved in a spy ring, although Elitcher admitted that he never actually passed any documents to Julius Rosenberg. Sobell never took the stand. The Rosenbergs denied any wrongdoing on their part. When Saypol questioned them about their past affiliations with the Communist party, they pleaded the Fifth Amendment and refused to answer. A large part of Saypol's case rested on Sobell's flight to Mexico and Julius Rosenberg's attempt to obtain a passport after Fuch's confession. The defendants' attempted flight damned them in the eyes of the jury. After a day of deliberating, the jury found all three defendants guilty of conspiracy.

"Worse Than Murder."

Now Judge Irving Kaufman had the responsibility of imposing the punishment. Although the defendants had not been convicted of treason, the judge appeared to pass sentence on unproven acts and an uncharged crime. Announcing that their crime was "worse than murder," he explained that "putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but what that millions more innocent people may pay the price of your treason." On 5 April 1951 Kaufman sentenced the Rosenbergs to die in the electric chair and Sobell to thirty years in prison.

International Protests

The Rosenbergs unsuccessfully appealed their convictions for two years, eventually taking their case to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the public interest in their case reached international proportions. There were many demonstrations urging the commutation of their death sentences. Some chivalrous supporters were against the idea of executing a woman, but most protested the hysteria of the trial and the extreme severity of the punishment. On 18 June 1953 there were demonstrations in support of the couple in Paris and New York. The following evening, shortly before 8:00 P.M., the Rosenbergs were electrocuted in Sing Sing prison in New York.

Sources:

Alvin H. Goldstein, The Unquiet Death of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (New York: Hill, 1975);

Joseph F. Sharlitt, Fatal Error: The Miscarriage of Justice That Sealed the Rosenbergs' Fate (New York: Scribners, 1989).

Rosenberg (Ethel and Julius) Espionage Case

█ ADRIENNE WILMOTH LERNER

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a couple accused in 1950 by the United States government of operating a Soviet spy network and giving the Soviet Union plans for the atomic bomb. During a time of tense scrutiny over alleged communist infiltration of the American government, the trial of the Rosenbergs became the center of a political storm over communist influence in America. Their trial was one of the most controversial of the twentieth century, ending with their execution.

Julius Rosenberg was a committed communist who had graduated from the City College of New York in 1939 with a degree in electrical engineering. He married Ethel Greenglass in the summer of that year. She was a headstrong woman, active in organizing labor groups. Julius had opened a mechanic shop with his brother-in-law, but the business soon began to fail, largely due to lack of attention by Julius, who invested his time spying for the Soviets. He began by stealing manuals for radar tubes and proximity fuses, and by the late 1940s, had two apartments set up as microfilm laboratories.

The arrest of the Rosenbergs was set in motion when the FBI arrested Klaus Fuchs, a British scientist who gave atomic secrets to the Soviets while working on the Manhattan Project. Fuchs's arrest and confession led to the arrest of Harry Gold, a courier for Soviet spies. Gold in turn led investigators to David Greenglass, a minor spy who confessed quickly. Greenglass then accused his sister Ethel and brother-in-law Julius of controlling his activities.

Julius immediately realized the implications of Harry Gold's arrest and began to make arrangements to get out of the country, but the FBI moved swiftly. Julius Rosenberg was arrested in July 1950.

Ethel Rosenberg was later arrested in August. Although Federal investigators had little evidence against her, they hoped to use the threat of prosecuting her as a lever to persuade Julius to confess. The plan failed, and the couple was charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. Their trial began on March 6, 1951.

From the beginning, the trial attracted national attention. The prosecution decided to keep the scope of the trial as narrow as possible, with establishing the Rosenbergs' guilt the main target, and exposing their spy ring a lesser concern. Nonetheless, the trial was punctuated by numerous arrests of spies associated with the Rosenbergs, some appearing in court to testify against them.

The defense tried to downplay the importance of the information the prosecution claimed the Rosenbergs had stolen, but then turned around and requested that all spectators and reporters be barred from the courtroom when the information was discussed.

The Rosenbergs accused David Greenglass of turning on them because of their failed business, but these efforts only elicited sympathy for a man who had been forced to turn in a family member. Greenglass damaged the Rosenbergs by testifying that Julius had arranged for him to give Harry Gold the design of the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki (which differed considerably from the Hiroshima bomb). When Gold himself testified, he named Anatoli Yakovlev as his contact. This directly tied the Rosenbergs to a known Soviet agent. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty on several accounts of espionage and conspiracy. They were sentenced to execution, a sentence usually reserved for cases of treason.

After months in prison, the Rosenbergs still maintained their innocence and began to write poignant letters, which were widely published, protesting their treatment. The case was followed closely in Europe, where many felt the Rosenbergs were being persecuted because they were Jewish (though Judge Kaufman was also Jewish). A movement began to protest the "injustice" of the Rosenberg trial. Passions both for and against the Rosenbergs grew so great that they even threatened Franco-American relations, as the French were particularly harsh in their condemnation of the trial as a sham.

In the months between the sentencing and execution, criticism of the trial grew more strident, and major demonstrations were held. Nobel-prize winner Jean-Paul Sartre called the case "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole nation." In spite of attempts at appeal and a temporary stay issued by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953, both refusing to confess.

Years after the event, the case continues to stir debate. Although the Rosenbergs were communists and engaged in espionage, they did not spy for an enemy of the United States, as the sentence might indicate, but rather for its wartime ally. Recent studies of the couple's activities show that the evidence against them was over-whelming. The declassification and release of Venona transcripts (a secret, decades-long, general surveillance operation) further implicated the Rosenbergs. Regardless of the evidence, the political and social upheaval surrounding the trial, and its ultimate outcome, can only be understood through the lens of heightened Cold War tensions and anti-Communist hysteria.

█ FURTHER READING:

BOOKS:

Nash, Jay Robert. Spies: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Dirty Deeds and Double Dealing from Biblical Times to Today. M. Evans, 1997.

SEE ALSO

Cold War (1945–1950), The Start of the Atomic Age
KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, USSR Committee of State Security)
McCarthyism

Rosenberg, Julius (b. 12 May 1918, d. 19 June 1953) and Ethel (b. 28 Sept. 1915, d. 19 June 1953). Spies against the US In September 1949, the USA became aware that the Soviet Union had developed nuclear technology years ahead of expectations and was thus capable of dropping atomic bombs. The following year Klaus Fuchs, a physicist involved in the development of the American atomic and hydrogen bombs, was arrested in England and confessed to having been part of a spy-ring. As a result, Henry Gold was arrested in the USA, and he identified Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who worked on atomic weaponry and had admitted Communist sympathies, as spies. They were arrested, found guilty of conspiracy and treason in a sensational trial at the height of McCarthy's anti-Communist campaigns, and sentenced to death. Many believed that their Jewish background helped to single them out from a number of spies uncovered at the time. They appealed to every court, including the Supreme Court, and their executions were stayed several times; but finally, amid great controversy, they were electrocuted in June 1953. The memoirs of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, written after he had been deposed, appear to support the contention that the Rosenbergs had worked for the USSR between 1944 and 1945.

nuclear bomb; Manhattan Project

Rosenberg, Julius (1918–53) spy. Rosenberg was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family on New York's Lower East Side. At City College, he studied electrical engineering and was active in leftwing activities. In 1945 Julius was removed from his position with the Army Signal Corps on grounds that he was a Communist, which he denied. He opened his own machine shop in partnership with his wife Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, who during World War II had worked on the atomic bomb at the Los Alamos, New Mexico, laboratory. In 1950, the Rosenbergs were arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union; the government alleged that they had passed secrets on the design of the atomic bomb to a confederate who then passed them on to the Soviets. The Rosenbergs denied the charges but were convicted on April 5, 1951, and sentenced to death. Efforts across the world to have the sentences commuted failed, given the raging anti-Communism that prevailed and the less open anti-Semitism, and the two were executed on June 19, 1953. In the decades since, information released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and by the Russian government have tended to confirm Julius's guilt, although there is less certainty about Ethel's; the Rosenbergs' sons have challenged the authenticity of these documents.