Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: America's Most Infamous Spies
It was the biggest trial of the Cold War. On one end, most American media supported the death penalty that loomed for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, demanding reprisal for what seemed terrifying proof of the Red Menace at work in our nation. Yet the Rosenbergs’ legal representation fought to appeal, to commute their sentences, and to protest on the grounds of insufficient evidence, and both left-leaning Americans and Europeans stood behind them. Even into the 21st century, activists including one of the couple’s sons, Robert Meeropol (né Rosenberg) have pushed to clear Ethel’s name.
Sixty-nine years after the execution, the case may never be settled to absolute satisfaction. But what were the facts of America’s front-page espionage trial as we know them now? And why were the Rosenbergs the only accused spies to be executed during the Cold War?
History.com narrates that Julius Rosenberg was first approached by Soviet spies in 1942. The 24-year-old child of Jewish immigrants was a former member of the Young Communist League USA, and working at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories in New Jersey made him additionally attractive to the Soviets. He would ascend to a recruitment role in 1944 and handle several other spies, including his brother-in-law David Greenglass, who worked on the Manhattan Project in New Mexico.
Ethel Rosenberg, 26 years old in 1942, had also been a member of the Young Communist League. She’d met Julius through her work with this group, and the couple had married in 1939. Her brother David Greenglass had been a member of the Young Communist League as well, where he met his future wife Ruth.
David was the first to be caught by the US government for passing classified information to Russia. Arrested on June 15th, 1950, he admitted his espionage and named Julius as a co-conspirator. History.com alleges he originally pointed to Ruth and temporarily denied Ethel’s involvement, while the Atomic Heritage Foundation states that he named Ethel and denied Ruth’s involvement. No matter the content of David’s early statements, Ruth would be the only member out of these four who ultimately escaped indictment.
Julius was arrested in July, 1950, off the testimony of David and Ruth. Ethel was arrested in August that year after testifying to a grand jury that she “had no knowledge of espionage efforts” — according to History.com, the FBI had intended her capture mainly as a way of pushing Julius to name other co-conspirators. David’s accusation of Ethel was weak and scant of evidence, but “was not shown to lawyers during the Rosenbergs’ trial.” The Atomic Heritage Foundation states that David had made a deal, changing his testimony to claim Ethel’s participation “typing notes for Julius” during meetings, in exchange for allowing Ruth to remain with her children. History.com makes the statement bolder: David Greenglass allegedly told Sam Roberts from the New York Times that he had implicated his sister specifically to give his wife immunity.
When the Rosenbergs’ trial came in February, 1951, their criminal charge was conspiracy to commit espionage, and “no tangible evidence was required.” The trial lasted a month and hinged on the Greenglasses’ conflicting testimonies. The Rosenbergs never admitted to involvement or named co-conspirators. Judge Irving Kaufman’s forceful assertion that the Rosenbergs’ crimes were “worse than murder” accompanied his choice of sentencing: execution for both, rather than the suggested 30 years of imprisonment for Ethel.
David Greenglass received 15 years in prison and served nine. While inside, he wrote a letter requesting that President Eisenhower commute the Rosenbergs’ sentences to life, but was denied. Nine appeals from the Rosenbergs’ attorneys failed. The end came on June 19th, 1953, when Julius and Ethel were executed by electric chair in New York’s Sing Sing Prison. They were 35 and 37 years old, and left behind their children, 10-year-old Michael and 6-year-old Robert.
Many questions and doubts remained pertinent after it was too late to release the Rosenbergs. For instance, the catchy line that Julius had helped the Soviets steal the ‘secret of the atomic bomb.’ According to the Rosenberg Fund for Children, founded by Robert Meeropol, prominent scientists including Oppenheimer asserted that there was no single ‘secret’ to the atomic bomb. Furthermore, the material stolen by David Greenglass was potentially too vague to have assisted the Soviet nuclear program at all.
In 1997, the Associated Press reported on the confessions of a retired KGB spy, 83-year-old Alexander Feklisov. According to Feklisov, Greenglass’s info from Los Alamos did little to inform Russia about the atomic bomb compared to other spies at the same site. Feklisov did affirm Julius’s useful contribution of US electronics information, however, including a duplicate model made of a proximity fuse. His stance on Ethel was that she “did not actively spy but probably was aware that her husband was involved.”
According to Harvard Law’s Alan Dershowitz, the Rosenbergs could have been “guilty and framed:” even if they were Soviet spies, much of their trial was based on faulty, inflated testimony. Scholarly opinions on the case vary, but according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation, many continue to emphasize that Ethel’s execution was unjust. Whether she was fully culpable, partially knowledgeable, or unaware, the rushed and severe sentencing doomed her to a rare fate, leaving her the only American woman executed in the US for a crime that wasn’t murder. The statistic is still sustained today.
