Rosenberg Case

Rosenberg Case in U.S. history, a lengthy and controversial espionage case. In 1950, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Julius Rosenberg (1918-53), an electrical engineer who had worked (1940-45) for the U.S. army signal corps, and his wife Ethel (1916-53); they were indicted for conspiracy to transmit classified military information to the Soviet Union. In the trial that followed (Mar., 1951), the government charged that in 1944 and 1945 the Rosenbergs had persuaded Ethel's brother, David Greenglass—an employee at the Los Alamos atomic bomb project—to provide them and a third person, Harry Gold, with top-secret data on nuclear weapons. The chief evidence against the Rosenbergs came from Greenglass and his wife, Ruth.

Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty (1951) and received the death sentence; Morton Sobell, a codefendant, received a 30-year prison term, as did Harry Gold; and David Greenglass was later sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Despite many court appeals and pleas for executive clemency, the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953. They became the first U.S. civilians to suffer the death penalty in an espionage trial.

The case aroused much controversy. Many claimed that the political climate made a fair trial impossible and that the only seriously incriminating evidence had come from a confessed spy; others questioned the value of the information transmitted to the Soviet Union and argued that the death penalty was too severe. Communists in the United States and abroad organized a campaign to save the Rosenbergs and received the support of many liberals and religious leaders.

Bibliography: See L. Nizer, The Implosion Conspiracy (1973); R. Radosh and J. Milton, The Rosenberg File (1984); R. and M. Meeropol, We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (2d ed. 1986); S. Roberts, The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair (2001).

Rosenberg case (1953) A US espionage case in which Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were convicted of obtaining information concerning atomic weapons and passing it on to Soviet agents between 1944 and 1945. They became the first US civilians to be sentenced to death for espionage by a US court. The only seriously incriminating evidence had come from a confessed spy and the lack of clemency shown to them was an example of the intense anti-communist feeling that gripped the USA in the 1950s.

Rosenberg Case. The early 1950s conviction and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for providing classified information to the Soviet Union about America's atomic bomb development remain among the most controversial events of the early Cold War.A graduate of the City College of New York, Julius Rosenberg joined the Communist party, along with his wife Ethel, in 1939. Working for Soviet intelligence during World War II, he provided Russian contacts with the super‐secret information he received from well‐placed spies at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos, New Mexico, atomic research facility. Despite clues from Soviet defectors, American authorities did not learn about atomic espionage until 1948, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with code breakers in the U.S. Army, decrypted and interpreted nearly three thousand messages, called the Venona Cables, between Soviet intelligence agencies in Moscow and spies in the United States. The cables quickly led to David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, who had worked as a machinist at Los Alamos during the war. Greenglass soon implicated Julius Rosenberg—code‐named “Liberal” in the Venona cables—as the leader of an atomic spy ring. Arrested in 1950, against a Cold War backdrop that included the second Alger Hiss trial, the fall of China to communism, the Korean War, and the 1949 confession of the German‐born British scientist Klaus Fuchs that he had spied for the Russians while assigned to Los Alamos, the Rosenbergs were tried and convicted the following year on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Before issuing the death sentence, trial judge Irving R. Kaufman accused the couple of causing “the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000, and who knows but that millions more innocent people may pay the price for your treason.”

The government's case against Julius Rosenberg was far stronger than its case against Ethel. While she undoubtedly knew about—and may well have supported—her husband's spying, she was not, by any reasonable standard, an active co‐conspirator. It appears she was arrested in order to pressure Julius into confessing. This was part of the government's “lever strategy”—a strategy that would lead an unyielding woman directly to her death. When Ethel was arrested one of the prosecutors said privately that “the case is not too strong against Mrs. Rosenberg,” and it grew no stronger as time passed. A death‐house questionnaire, prepared by prosecutors should Julius break down at the last moment, included this startling question: “Was your wife cognizant of your activities?”

Despite international protests, the Rosenbergs were electrocuted at New York's Sing Sing prison on 19 June 1953, proclaiming their innocence to the end. By the 1990s, however, the declassification of the Venona files and other documents led all but their most fervent supporters to acknowledge the guilt of Julius Rosenberg and, at least, the partial complicity of his wife. While the Rosenbergs' crimes were real indeed, millions still remember their executions as a vindictive act of Cold War justice.
See also Anticommunism; Communist Party—USA.

Bibliography

Ronald Radosh and and Joyce Milton , The Rosenberg File, 2d ed., 1997.
Robert J. Lamphere and and Tom Schachtman , The FBI–KGB Wars: A Special Agent's Story, 1986.
John Earl Haynes and and Harvey Klehr , Venona: Decoding Soviet Intelligence in America, 1999.

Richard Gid Powers