Justice or Political Theater? The Execution of the Rosenbergs
The narrative we explore today revolves around the harrowing tale of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage in 1953, becoming the first American civilians to face such a fate during peacetime. Their conviction stemmed from allegations that they conspired to transmit atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, a charge that incited profound national debate amidst the anxieties of the Cold War. As we delve into their story, we confront the complexities of ideology, betrayal, and the devastating impact of political paranoia on a family. The Rosenbergs' case encapsulates the fears of an era, raising critical questions about justice, loyalty, and the true nature of their alleged crimes. Ultimately, this episode serves as a poignant reminder of the precarious balance between national security and individual rights in times of pervasive fear.
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Takeaways:
- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 for espionage during peacetime, a significant historical event.
- Their case exemplifies the intense paranoia of the Cold War era and the fear of communism.
- Evidence against the Rosenbergs was primarily based on testimonies that were later revealed to be unreliable.
- The trial showcased a judicial system influenced by political ideologies rather than objective justice.
- The execution of the Rosenbergs remains a contentious issue, with debates regarding their guilt and the fairness of their trial.
- The story illustrates the devastating impact of ideology on personal lives and the potential for miscarriages of justice.
Transcript
Dearest sweethearts, my most precious children, always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience.
Speaker A:We press you close and kiss you with all our strength.
Speaker A:Lovingly, Daddy and Mommy.
Speaker B:Those were the final words of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, written to their two young sons, Michael and Robbie, just hours before they walked to the electric chair.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:Outside the walls of Sing Sing prison in New York, a tense crowd had gathered, some protesting the execution, others celebrating it.
Speaker B:Inside, history was about to be made.
Speaker B:Julius and Ethel Rosenberg would become the first and only American civilians executed for espionage during peacetime.
Speaker A:Their crime, conspiracy to commit espionage.
Speaker A:The charge, stealing the secret of the atomic bomb and giving it to the Soviet Union.
Speaker A:The sentencing judge would call their crime, quote, worse than murder, end quote.
Speaker A:But were they the master spies the government portrayed?
Speaker A:Or were they scapegoats, sacrificed on the altar of Cold War paranoia?
Speaker B:Welcome to history's greatest crimes.
Speaker B:I'm Michael.
Speaker A:And I'm Elena.
Speaker B:In today's episode, we'll unravel the twisted tale of the Adam spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Speaker B:Their story is one of ideology, betrayal, and a family torn apart by a world on the brink of nuclear annihilation.
Speaker B:And in many ways, the convicted couple would come to represent everything Americans feared about Communism, the Soviet Union and the Cold War.
Speaker A:To understand the crime, you first have to understand the fear.
Speaker A: The late: Speaker A:The triumphant end of World War II hadn't brought peace.
Speaker A:Instead, it ushered in a new, chilling conflict with a former ally, the Soviet Union.
Speaker A:The Cold War had begun and with it a terrifying new reality, the nuclear arms race.
Speaker B:The Cold War was known as such because the two major players in the conflict, those being the United States and the Soviet Union, never faced off on the battlefield in a hot war against one another.
Speaker B:But the Cold War did produce other spin off wars, including the Korean War and later the Vietnam Wars.
Speaker B:And the potential for a nuclear war to break out at any moment was always there in the background.
Speaker A: For four years, from: Speaker A:First produced during the famous American Manhattan Project, the atom bomb demonstrated its potential during The World War II bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
Speaker A:This was a positive outcome for the United States in that the bombings motivated Japan to to finally surrender in the war.
Speaker A:But it was also a negative outcome.
Speaker A:Americans quickly realized that if other enemy nations discovered how to make such a weapon, it could be Used against them too.
Speaker A:Over the course of the Cold War, that fear would lead to new terms like Mutually Assured Destruction, which suggested that a full scale use of nuclear weapons by one superpower would inevitably lead to the annihilation of both.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker A:The news sent a shockwave across America.
Speaker A:How did they get it so fast?
Speaker B:The immediate, terrifying answer for many was espionage.
Speaker B:There had to be Soviet spies in America.
Speaker A: y led to the Red scare of the: Speaker A:Senator Joseph McCarthy launched his infamous crusade against American officials, military leaders, Hollywood actors and even regular people.
Speaker B:The climate of fear and suspicion grew even stronger across the country.
Speaker B:Loyalty oaths became a thing.
Speaker B:There were blacklists and there were even televised congressional hearings.
Speaker B:And this became the new normal.
Speaker B:To be a Communist or even to be associated with Communists, was to be seen as a potential traitor.
Speaker A:This was the environment that would produce cartoon shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle, who faced off against two Russian like spies, Boris and Natasha.
Speaker A:It led to films shown to American school children like Duck and Cover, which supposedly taught them how to survive the sudden onset of nuclear war.
Speaker A:As one line in the film stated, quote, always remember, kids, the flash of an atomic bomb can come at any time, no matter where you may be.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker B:It was in this pressure cooker of fear and suspicion that the world first heard the names Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Speaker B:On the surface, they were an ordinary couple, both born to Jewish immigrant families on the Lower east side of New York.
Speaker A:Julius was 33 years old and a graduate in electrical engineering from City College.
Speaker A:He didn't appear particularly unique.
Speaker A:Standing at about 5 foot 8 inches with round glasses and a mustache, Ethel was an aspiring singer and union organizer.
Speaker A:In court photos, she's shown as a prim woman in her mid-30s with dark brown hair set in the current halo style.
Speaker A:And other court documents, she's described as, quote, a little woman with a pleasant face and a soft, gentle voice.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker B: t League dance and married in: Speaker B:Bonded by a shared love for each other and a fervent belief in Communism as the answer to the poverty and inequality of the Great Depression.
Speaker A: Depression, which lasted from: Speaker A:USA the widespread and Long lasting economic hardship and social unrest that the Great Depression created influenced some people to see the economic advantages of communist ideas, particularly for Americans living in poverty.
Speaker B:Looking at the big picture, the growth of the Communist Party in the United States during the Great Depression actually wasn't that big.
Speaker B: in: Speaker B:But the impact of communist ideas, or ideas seemingly connected somehow to communism was much bigger.
Speaker A:That's right, Michael.
Speaker A: nce of organized labor in the: Speaker A:And many conservatives who opposed the growth of the federal government during Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidential terms saw his efforts as based in communism or socialism, depending on who you asked.
Speaker B: s and early: Speaker B:When the Cold War began and the Soviet Union and Stalin became the official enemy, the American fear of communism became even more intense.
Speaker A:And in some ways, the ordinary looking Rosenberg couple was the stuff of American nightmares at the time.
Speaker A: In the late: Speaker A:They had two young sons, Michael and Robert.
Speaker A:And Julius ran a small machine shop business with his brother in law.
Speaker A:From most angles, Julius and Ethel appeared to be the quintessential American couple.
Speaker B:But behind the scenes, they were part of a smaller group of true believers in communism.
Speaker B:FBI files from the time detailed their activities.
Speaker B:Signing Communist party petitions, distributing literature, hosting party meetings in their small apartment.
Speaker B:And it was that small apartment that ultimately became the center of a huge media covered investigation.
Speaker A:But the investigation that ultimately led to the Rosenbergs apartment didn't start in New York, where they lived or even within the United States.
Speaker A: ic and Great Britain with the: Speaker A:Fox was a brilliant German born physicist who had worked on the top secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Speaker B:This was the project that ultimately produced the atomic bomb for the United States at the end of World War II.
Speaker A:That's right Michael.
Speaker A: But in: Speaker A: even year period beginning in: Speaker A:During that time period, he had provided his handlers with some of the most valuable atomic intelligence that the Soviets ever received.
Speaker B:Fox confession explained how the Soviet Union developed their atomic bomb so quickly.
Speaker B:But most importantly for our story, it triggered a chain reaction Klaus Fox named an accomplice, an American courier, a Philadelphia chemist named Harry Gold.
Speaker B:When the FBI arrested Gold, he too confessed.
Speaker B:And his confession led investigators to another name, another American supplying information to the Soviets.
Speaker B:That was David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's younger brother.
Speaker A:David Greenglass, who was also a member of the Young Communist League, was an army machinist.
Speaker A:By a remarkable twist of fate, David was assigned to work at the very heart of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos.
Speaker A:As we've discussed, that project was developing the the atomic bomb for the United States during World War II.
Speaker A:So David was in the perfect position to be a source of information about it.
Speaker B:According to trial testimony, the recruitment of David Greenglass to collect secret information was not a cloak and dagger affair, but it was a family affair.
Speaker A: viet Union's Secret Police in: Speaker A:At that point, Julius started helping to pass along classified information to the Soviet Union.
Speaker A:And he recruited other sympathetic individuals to do so as well.
Speaker A:For example, Rosenberg recruited William Pearl and a physicist and fellow member of the Young Communist League.
Speaker A:And then Pearl sent thousands of documents from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, including a complete set of design and production drawings for the first US Operational jet fighter.
Speaker B:At some point, Rosenberg's Soviet associates learned that his brother in law, David Greenglass, was working on the Manhattan Project.
Speaker B:They directed Julius to recruit him as well.
Speaker A: In November of: Speaker A:According to Ruth's later testimony, Julius told her that their, quote, friends, the Russians as a wartime ally, deserved to have the atomic information to create a balance of power and prevent any one nation from using the bomb as a threat.
Speaker A:Threat?
Speaker A:It was a pitch based not on treason, but on ideological solidarity.
Speaker B:Interestingly, Claus Fox and other scientists passing along this information presented a similar argument.
Speaker B:When asked why he spied, Fox answered, quote, knowledge of atomic research should not be the private property of any one country, but should be shared with the rest of the world for the benefit of mankind.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A:David Greenglass initially refused Julius proposition, but eventually agreed.
Speaker A:The information he passed on was not the complete secret of the atomic bomb, as the headlines would later scream.
Speaker A:Instead, it revealed what a skilled machinist would know.
Speaker A:He provided a sketch and 12 pages of detailed notes on the implosion type bomb, specifically focusing on the high explosive lens molds he worked on.
Speaker A:While historians and scientists later dismissed the sketches and notes as crude, the real Importance of it to the Soviets was in corroborating the most sophisticated intelligence they were already getting from Klaus Fox.
Speaker A:It told them that Fox's information was good.
Speaker B:The most dramatic piece of the story, later told by the prosecution in court was about the recognition signal created by Julius Rosenberg.
Speaker B:It was a detail so mundane it was almost surreal.
Speaker A:To ensure the courier Harry Gold, could identify himself to David Greenglass when they met up in New Mexico, Julius allegedly cut the side panel of a jello box into two irregular pieces and gave them each to Ruth Greenglass and the Courier.
Speaker B:At the trial, David Greenglass described the moment of contact.
Speaker B:Quote, there was a knock on the door and I opened it.
Speaker B:There was a man standing in the hallway who asked If I was Mr. Greenglass.
Speaker B:And I said yes, I.
Speaker B:He stepped through the door and he said, Julius sent me.
Speaker B:And I said, oh, and walked to my wife's purse, took out the wallet and took out the matched part of the Jello box.
Speaker B:He produced his piece and we checked them and they fitted and the identification was made.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A:A Jello box.
Speaker A: cal detail, but for a jury in: Speaker A:It was a piece of everyday American life twisted into a tool of international espionage.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And it was devastatingly effective.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:The courtroom was a theater of the Cold War, and the cast of characters was unforgettable.
Speaker B:On the prosecution side was U.S. attorney Irving Sapel, a man Time magazine dubbed, quote, the nation's number one legal hunter of top communists.
Speaker B:He was assisted by a young, fiercely ambitious and utterly ruthless lawyer named Roy Cohn.
Speaker A:Defending the Rosenbergs was Emmanuel Manny Block, a lawyer known for taking on leftist causes.
Speaker A:Block was passionate and dedicated, but some historians argue he was out of his depth, making several critical errors during the trial.
Speaker A:The biggest one was that he became deeply, personally involved, forming a relationship with the Rosenbergs that went further than attorney and clients.
Speaker B:And overseeing it all was Judge Irving R. Kaufman, a staunch anti communist.
Speaker B:Kaufman had actively lobbied to preside over the case.
Speaker B:Decades later, it would be revealed that he held improper private or ex parte discussions with the prosecution through the trial, a serious breach of judicial ethics.
Speaker A:The prosecution's case was built almost entirely on the testimony of two people, David and Ruth Greenglass.
Speaker A:There was virtually no physical evidence.
Speaker A:The government couldn't produce the original jello box, the original notes, or the microfilm camera that was supposedly used in the process.
Speaker B:All they had was the word of David and Ruth Greenglass.
Speaker B:David testified that Julius had recruited him, received the sketches and that Ethel had typed up his handwritten notes.
Speaker A:Ruth Greenglass corroborated every detail, adding her own damning touches.
Speaker A:She described a conversation where Ethel complained of being tired from all the typing she was doing for the cause.
Speaker A:She said, quote, Ethel said that she was tired and I asked her what she had been doing.
Speaker A:She said she had been typing and I asked her if she found David's notes hard to distinguish and she said no, she was used to his handwriting, end quote.
Speaker A:This was the key testimony that placed Ethel at the center of the conspiracy.
Speaker B:Manny Block's defense strategy was simple.
Speaker B:Destroy the credibility of the Greenglasses.
Speaker B:When David Greenglass was arrested by the FBI in June of 50, he quickly implicated Julius Rosenberg.
Speaker B: ore a grand jury in August of: Speaker B:However, in February of 51 weeks before the trial, David changed his testimony to claim that Ethel had typed up his notes.
Speaker A: er husband Julius in Court in: Speaker A:In exchange for that testimony, the government allowed Ruth to stay with her two children.
Speaker A:And Ruth Greenglass was noted as a co conspirator but was never indicted.
Speaker B:With that agreement in mind, Ethel and Julius defense lawyer made a closing argument in which he portrayed David as a monster, a self confessed espionage agent who would betray his own family to save his own skin.
Speaker B:He thundered at the jury, quote, but one thing I think you do know, that any man who will testify against his own blood and flesh, his own sister is repulsive, is revolting, who violates every code that, that any civilization has ever lived by, end quote.
Speaker B:He painted Ruth as a manipulative embodiment of evil who had cleverly wriggled out of prosecution.
Speaker A:But Bloch made a catastrophic error When David Greenglass began to describe the sketch of the lens mold, the supposed secret of the atom bomb.
Speaker A:Bloch, likely in a misguided attempt to appear patriotic, requested that the courtroom be sealed to protect the information.
Speaker A:Judge Kaufman granted the request.
Speaker B:The effect was disastrous.
Speaker B:By treating Greenglass's crude hand drawn sketch as a world shattering secret, Bloch inadvertently gave an immense credibility to it in the jury's eyes.
Speaker B:The prosecution, which had listed over a hundred potential witnesses, suddenly found it only needed 20.
Speaker B:The defense had handed them their biggest victory.
Speaker A:The Rosenbergs also made a critical mistake.
Speaker A: he supercharged atmosphere of: Speaker A:It was an admission of guilt.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B:Guilty on all counts.
Speaker B:The country was divided, but the courtroom was set for the final act.
Speaker A:A week later, Judge Irving Kaufman delivered the sentence.
Speaker A:He had the choice between a maximum of 30 years in prison or death.
Speaker A:And he chose death.
Speaker A:And his speech explaining that decision is one of the most chilling documents of the cold war era.
Speaker A:He didn't just sentence them for espionage, he sentenced them for what he saw as the consequences of their actions.
Speaker B:Kaufman's voice filled the courtroom.
Speaker B:Quote, I consider your crime worse than murder.
Speaker B:In your case, I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the a bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect.
Speaker B:The bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the communist aggression in Korea with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason, end quote.
Speaker A:This was an astonishing claim.
Speaker A: r, which had begun in June of: Speaker A:But in the court of public opinion and in Judge Kaufman's court, the connection was made.
Speaker A:He was transforming them from spies into the architects of a bloody war, directly blaming them for the deaths of American soldiers.
Speaker B:He made sure to single out Ethel, whose direct involvement was the shakiest part of the prosecution's case.
Speaker B:The case against Ethel Rosenberg was always and had always been weak.
Speaker B:So weak, in fact, that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had explicitly suggested using her as leverage to get more information from her husband Julius.
Speaker B:But Judge Kaufman did his best to present her as as guilty as possible.
Speaker B:He stated, quote, instead of deterring him from pursuing Julius Rosenberg's ignoble cause, she encouraged and assisted the cause.
Speaker B:She was a full fledged partner in this crime.
Speaker B:End quote.
Speaker A:And in a final devastating blow, he attacked their character as parents.
Speaker A:He said, quote, love for their cause dominated their lives.
Speaker A:It was even greater than their love for their children.
Speaker A:And end quote.
Speaker B:With that, the sentence was passed.
Speaker B:The judicial system had become a weapon in this ideological war.
Speaker B:And the punishment was designed not just to fit the crime, but to send a message to the world.
Speaker B:Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spent more than two years on death row at Sing Sing prison, separated for most of that time.
Speaker B:They communicated through a remarkable series of letters.
Speaker B:In fact, hundreds of them.
Speaker B:These letters are a window into their final years, filled with declarations of love, political Conviction and agonizing concern for their two sons.
Speaker A:Ethel wrote to Julius, quote, sweetheart, I love you with a strength that defies my pain, I still hold me close.
Speaker A:My heart is heavy with wanting you, end quote.
Speaker A:Julius replied with his own terms of endearment, calling her, quote, my adorable wife honey and my sunshine, telling her, quote, I need you more than anything else, end quote.
Speaker B:The final letter to their sons, Michael and Robbie, is heartbreaking.
Speaker B:It said, quote, eventually you must come to believe that life is worth the living.
Speaker B:Be comforted that even now, with the end of our slowly approaching, that we know this with a conviction that defeats the executioner, end quote.
Speaker A:While the Rosenbergs awaited their fate, their case became a global firestorm.
Speaker A:An international campaign for clemency erupted, with pleas coming from some of the world's most famous figures.
Speaker A:Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Jean Paul Sartre, even Pope Pius xii.
Speaker A:Massive protests took place in Paris, London and Milan.
Speaker B:The US Government dismissed these protests as communist inspired.
Speaker B:But internal memos show that the Soviet Union and its satellite states actually ignored the case in their official press.
Speaker B:The outcry against the sentence was genuine, a reflection of a world that saw the death sentence as a barbaric overreach, a symptom of America's anti communist hysteria.
Speaker A:But domestically, the pressure was immense.
Speaker A:Many Americans, fed a steady diet of Red scare rhetoric, believed the sentence was just.
Speaker A:President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to grant clemency.
Speaker A:Echoing Judge Kaufman's logic, he issued a statement claiming that by accelerating the Soviet bomb program, the Rosenbergs, quote, may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people, end quote.
Speaker B: ,: Speaker B: up from its scheduled time of: Speaker B:Julius went first.
Speaker B:He was strapped into the electric chair and pronounced dead at 8:06.
Speaker A:Then it was Ethel's turn.
Speaker A:She was given the same cycle of electric shocks.
Speaker A:But after the power was turned off, doctors discovered her heart was still beating.
Speaker A:She was still alive.
Speaker A:The executioner administered two more shocks.
Speaker A:Witnesses reported that smoke rose from her head before she was finally pronounced dead.
Speaker B:The execution of the Rosenbergs was not the end of the story.
Speaker B:For decades, the debate has raged.
Speaker B:Were they as guilty as they have been made out to be?
Speaker A:The answer, when it finally came, was more complex and more tragic than either side could fully imagine.
Speaker A: In: Speaker B: ligent cables sent during the: Speaker B:And what they revealed was stunning.
Speaker B:The cables confirmed without a doubt that Julius Rosenberg, codenamed Antenna, was the leader of a productive and valuable spy ring.
Speaker B:He had passed the Soviets crucial information not just on the atomic bomb, but on radar, sonar and jet propulsion engines.
Speaker A:But the VENONA cables were just as revealing.
Speaker A:For what they didn't say about Ethel, she is mentioned, but only peripherally.
Speaker A:One key message from a Soviet agent to Moscow noted that Ethel knew about her husband's work and was a devoted wife.
Speaker A:But that, quote, due to illness, she did not engage in the work herself.
Speaker A:End quote.
Speaker A:The Soviets never gave her a code name, a clear sign that they didn't consider her an active agent.
Speaker B:So there it was.
Speaker B:The unveiling of the VENONA counterintelligence program from the time simultaneously proved Julius's guilt and Ethel's very minimal role.
Speaker B:It confirmed the government's long held belief that a spy ring existed.
Speaker B:But it also gave powerful credence to the defense's claim that Ethel was prosecuted primarily as.
Speaker B:As a lever to get her husband to talk.
Speaker B:The case was not a simple binary of guilt or innocence.
Speaker B:It was the story of a guilty man and a woman who was at most a knowing accessory caught in the same net.
Speaker A:And then came the final devastating Twist.
Speaker A: In a: Speaker A:He had lied on the witness stand.
Speaker A:He confessed that the crucial testimony about Ethel typing up his notes was false.
Speaker A:He said it was likely his own wife Ruth who had done the typing.
Speaker A:He lied, he said, to protect his wife and secure her immunity, even though it meant sending his own sister to the electric chair.
Speaker B:As an aside, David Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but was released after nine and a half years, after which time he reunited with his wife, Ruth.
Speaker B: new names until ruth died in: Speaker A:The Rosenberg sons, Michael and Robert, were orphaned by the execution.
Speaker A:Michael was nine years old at the time and Robert was eight.
Speaker A:The boys were shuttled between relatives and a children's shelter before being adopted by the songwriter Abel Mirapol, the man who wrote the haunting anti lynching anthem Strange Fruit.
Speaker A:Michael and Robert took his last name and spent their lives fighting to clear their parents names.
Speaker A:They were eventually forced by the weight of evidence to accept their father's guilt.
Speaker A:But they never wavered in their belief that their mother was innocent.
Speaker A:And both sons are still alive today.
Speaker B:So we're left with a complex and deeply unsettling verdict from history.
Speaker B:Julius Rosenberg was a spy.
Speaker B:The evidence is now overwhelming, but many still believe that the crime for which he was executed, giving the Soviets the secret of the bomb, was a gross exaggeration.
Speaker B:The information from Greenglass was of limited value and the Soviets already had far better intelligence coming from Klaus Fox and Ethel Rosenberg.
Speaker A:The evidence strongly suggests she was not a spy.
Speaker A:She was a wife who knew what her husband was doing and supported his ideals.
Speaker A:She was executed for a crime she almost certainly did not commit.
Speaker B:In the end, the story of the Rosenbergs is a chilling lesson.
Speaker B:It's about how, in a time of great national fear, a line between justice and political theater can vanish.
Speaker B:It's about how a family can be destroyed by ideology and betrayal.
Speaker B:And it's about how a government, in its zeal to punish a crime, can end up committing a far greater one.
Speaker B:I'm Michael.
Speaker A:And I'm Elena.
Speaker B:Until next time, Stay curious.
