Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in 1951 for spying for the USSR and giving the Soviets the secrets of the construction of the atomic bomb. – You have certainly changed the course of history – to the detriment of your country. I consider your crime worse than murder. Perhaps millions of innocent people will have to pay the price for your betrayal, Judge Irving Kaufman told the convicts.
Their trial was hailed as the most controversial in American history and sparked a wave of protests around the world. A global campaign was launched to pardon them, but to no avail. The Rosenbergs became the first American civilians to be executed for espionage in peacetime. Later, she wrote about them: Sylvia Plath in the novel “The Glass Bell”, the story was also touched upon by Marek Hłasko in the story “The Great Fear”. Leon Kruczkowski wrote a drama about them “Juliusz i Ethel”, and the character of Ethel herself appeared in the famous play “Angels in America”.
The case of “nuclear spies”
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg died on June 19, 1953 in the electric chair at the infamous Sing Sing State Prison. He was the first to be executed – the procedure took place without major complications, he died in a dozen or so seconds. Things got complicated with Ethel. She survived three standard shocks – doctors said her heart was still beating. She was given two more. Eyewitnesses claimed that her head was smoking. The Rosenbergs maintained their innocence to the very end and remained silent. They left behind two sons – six-year-old Robert and 10-year-old Michael.
On August 29, 1949, at the nuclear test site in Semipalatinsk, the Soviets carried out the first test explosion of their atomic bomb – this was a faithful copy of the American “Fat Man”, which exploded in 1945 over Nagasaki. The US government did not expect this. Initial intelligence said that the Soviet nuclear program was far behind the team that worked on the “Manhattan Project” and would take 5 to 25 years to bring the project to completion. Meanwhile, the telegrams decrypted as part of the “Venom Project” that Moscow exchanged with its foreign intelligence agencies in the 1940s showed that in the US there were, among others, “atomic spies”. It was they who gave the USSR key documents with the results of American research, which significantly accelerated the construction of Soviet atomic weapons. The FBI and US intelligence have discovered that the “Manhattan Project” was infiltrated by at least three spies. By the thread they came to a ball. The Rosenbergs were merely cogs in a larger machine. They were arrested in 1950, and their high-profile trial began a year later.
– This great machine was organized because atomic physicists from various European countries gathered at the Los Alamos center came to the conclusion that for the sake of the world, for the sake of humanity, it should be ensured that the United States does not have a nuclear monopoly. Hence, when the possibility of cooperation with the Soviet agents appeared, they started such cooperation willingly and for ideological reasons – commented back in 1997 for historian prof. Pawel Wieczorkiewicz.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg photo: Department of Justice, Office of the US Attorney for the Southern Judicial District of New York, US National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain
Who were the Rosenbergs?
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass met in 1936 as active members of the American Communist Party (even Oppenheimer himself was later accused of being a member). They were both born in New York City to Jewish immigrants. She was born on September 28, 1915 and was an aspiring actress and singer. Later, she began working as a secretary in a trading company. It was there that she studied labor rights. Julius was born on May 12, 1918 – his family came to the USA from Poland. They got married in 1939, Julius already had an engineering diploma and enlisted in the signal troops. In 1940, he was already serving at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, where he worked as an engineer-inspector until 1945. He was dismissed from service when his superiors discovered that he belonged to the Communist Party.
In 2001, former Soviet intelligence officer Alexander Feklisov admitted that Rosenberg had been recruited in 1942. Since then, he’d built up a petty spy ring and passed on thousands of pages of documents and secret reports from the Emerson Electric Manufacturing Company to his liaison, including a complete blueprint for building a proximity fuse. Meanwhile, Ethel’s brother David Greenglass, already recruited by Rosenberg, was hired as a mechanic for the “Manhattan Project” and supplied them with materials related to the construction of the atomic bomb. The Rosenbergs passed the data on to a courier, Harry Gold, who delivered the materials to the Soviet vice-consul based in New York, he reports.
Gold was arrested on May 23, 1950. The Rosenbergs were arrested in June and July, respectively. They were charged with espionage, and the trial began on March 6, 1951. Greenglass was the main prosecution witness.
The jury had little doubt that Julius Rosenberg was spying for the USSR, more controversial was the question of Ethel’s own guilt. If only because her brother, David Greenglass, tried in a secret trial, changed his testimony in the course of the proceedings. Initially, he stated that Ethel was innocent, later he reported that she actively participated in the transmission of secret information – she typed it and passed it to the courier. It was only years later that he admitted that he had incriminated his sister so that his wife could avoid a lawsuit and raise her children.
On March 29, 1951, a judge found the Rosenbergs guilty, and on April 5 they were sentenced to death. For comparison: Gold was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and brother Ethel, who was tried in a secret trial, was sentenced to 15 years, of which he served 10.
Over the next two years, the Rosenbergs appealed for a change of sentence, and a global campaign to prevent the death penalty was launched. Seven appeals were dismissed, with President Harry Truman rejecting a clemency request in 1952, as well as President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. Ethel Rosenberg became the first woman to be executed by the American government since Mary Surratt was hanged in 1865 (for her alleged role in the murder of Abraham Lincoln).
For years after the execution of the Rosenbergs, there was fierce debate about whether the punishment applied was disproportionate to the crimes. Researchers believe that the American authorities deliberately bloated the charges against Ethel to put pressure on the marriage. Investigators were hoping that one of the couples would break down and turn in other spies – allegedly, attempts were made right up to the execution and pardons were offered in return. and Ethel remained steadfast. Rosenberg is now considered an idealist who worked for a cause, and his wife died keeping his secrets.
– Polish opinion, the opinion of Polish scientific circles and the opinion of the whole world fighting for peace and justice see in this judgment not only a violation of the elementary principles of justice, not only a new provocation against American patriots, but also a new provocation against all the forces of progress fighting for peace and justice – said in 1951 Stanisław Kulczyński, professor of the University of Adam Mickiewicz, reported by the Polish Radio. Bolesław Bierut in Wrocław.
Robert, the “father of the atomic bomb”, did not escape the campaign either. Already after the war he was targeted by the American intelligence, which the scientist suspected of spying for the USSR. When work on the “Manhattan Project” began, the army decided to turn a blind eye to the fact that the head of science before the war might have belonged to the American Communist Party. In the era of the Cold War and the hunt for Soviet spies, it was a terrible burden. It didn’t help that Oppenheimer’s mistress was a staunch communist, and after Hiroshima and Nagasaki he himself had sought to stop the atomic arms race with the USSR and insisted on the creation of an international system to control atomic energy.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
