The 1951 trial and conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union marked a defining moment in the early Cold War. More than 70 years later, the case remains controversial and emotionally charged. Historians continue to debate key questions: What was the extent of the Rosenbergs‘ spying? Did they receive a fair trial? And did their actions warrant the death penalty?
A Tale of Idealism, Betrayal and Tragedy
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass were a young Jewish couple enamored with communism when they married on June 18, 1939. Julius, born in 1918 to a family of immigrants from Poland, was an engineering student at the City College of New York. Ethel, born in 1915, had been an aspiring actress and member of a union linked to the Communist Party. Both saw the Soviet Union as a bulwark against fascism at a time when Western governments seemed indifferent to the threat.
In 1940, Julius took a civilian job with the Army Signal Corps, where he had access to classified military technology. Around 1942, he was recruited by Soviet intelligence to commit espionage, according to decoded Soviet cables released in 1995. Julius used his position to gather secrets about radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines that he passed on to his handlers.
Perhaps his most significant coup was persuading his brother-in-law David Greenglass, a machinist at the top-secret Los Alamos laboratory, to share crude sketches and details of the atomic bomb project in 1944-45. These secrets may have accelerated the Soviet A-bomb project by a year or two, helping fuel the nuclear arms race.
The house of cards finally collapsed in 1949, when U.S. intelligence began unraveling the Rosenbergs‘ spy network. Julius was arrested on suspicion of espionage on June 17, 1950. Ethel was arrested on August 11. The government hoped to use her as leverage to persuade Julius to confess and name names, but he maintained his innocence.
Trial of the Century in a Climate of Fear
The trial of the Rosenbergs in March 1951 became an international sensation. The prosecution‘s case rested heavily on the testimony of David Greenglass and his wife Ruth, who had acted as a courier. To avoid being charged herself, Ruth implicated Ethel in typing up notes containing atomic secrets in the Rosenbergs‘ apartment.
But as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Finder notes, "The evidence against Ethel was shaky, based entirely on David and Ruth Greenglass‘s testimony. Neither of them actually saw Ethel type anything; they ‘surmised‘ that she had."
On March 29, 1951, a jury found the Rosenbergs guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, which carried a possible death sentence under the 1917 Espionage Act. Judge Irving Kaufman did not hesitate, condemning their "diabolical conspiracy" to help "destroy a God-fearing nation" in "a time of war." Many observers felt he was playing to the McCarythite atmosphere of the times.
The Rosenbergs‘ defenders argued that, at most, they were minor spies who passed on low-level secrets at a time when the USSR was still a U.S. ally. They pointed out many discrepancies and contradictions in the Greenglasses‘ testimony. They invoked the specter of antisemitism, suggesting the Rosenbergs were being singled out as Jewish scapegoats.
In the end, none of these arguments swayed the court of public opinion. Nor did a global clemency campaign by the likes of Albert Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, and even the Pope.On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel were executed just minutes apart at Sing Sing Prison, becoming the first U.S. civilians put to death for espionage. They left behind two orphaned sons, Michael and Robert, aged 10 and 6.
Revisiting a Divisive Case
In the decades since their execution, the Rosenberg case has lost none of its power to stir emotion and debate. In the 1970s, the Freedom of Information Act opened up thousands of pages of FBI files pointing to Julius‘s guilt but raising more questions about the extent of Ethel‘s involvement. Then in 1995, the U.S. government released nearly 3,000 decrypted Soviet cables, as part of the Venona project, that clearly implicated Julius.
Perhaps the most moving reassessment came from the Rosenbergs‘ own sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol (they took the name of their adoptive parents). In their 1997 book We Are Your Sons, they acknowledged their father had been a spy but argued their mother was innocent. "Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy," they wrote. "She was a supportive wife, a loving mother, and an innocent idealist who was coldly framed and put to death by her own government."
Many historians now believe Ethel probably knew about and supported Julius‘s espionage ring but did not actively participate. The perjured testimony against her by her own family members remains one of the most troubling aspects of the whole affair. As does the U.S. government‘s zeal in making an example of the couple despite the lack of evidence that they shared the single most important atomic secret: the bomb‘s design.
At the same time, declassified Soviet documents leave no doubt Julius was a dedicated spy who passed on military-industrial information of significant value to America‘s Cold War rival. While not matching the "crime of the century" hype, the secrets certainly went beyond what the Rosenbergs‘ defenders often contend.
The human tragedy at the heart of the case has resonated through the culture, from Sylvia Plath‘s The Bell Jar to E.L. Doctorow‘s The Book of Daniel to Tony Kushner‘s Angels in America. Yet the lessons for our time remain elusive. The Rosenbergs were guilty of betraying their country‘s trust, but the country also failed them as citizens entitled to fairness and due process.
More than anything, the case is a cautionary tale about the ease with which a climate of fear, stoked by unscrupulous politicians, can erode civil liberties and replace healthy skepticism with blind certainty. As the writer Maggie Doherty reflects, "we don‘t like ambiguity when it comes to capital crimes. The Rosenbergs make us uncomfortable because we can no longer be absolutely sure about what they did or didn‘t do, and what they did or didn‘t deserve."
References
- Feklisov, Alexander. The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma Books, 2001.
- Finder, Joseph. "The Rosenbergs‘ Legacy." The Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2003.
- Meeropol, Michael and Robert. We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. University of Illinois Press, 1987.
- Roberts, Sam. The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case. Random House, 2001.
- Schneir, Walter and Miriam. Invitation to an Inquest. Doubleday, 1965.
