Ethel & Julius Rosenberg: Cold War Spies

On June 19, 1953, husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed by electric chair for their role in passing military secrets to the Soviet Union which helped the Soviets catch up with the United States in terms of military technology. Thanks in part to the information they got from the Rosenbergs, the Soviets were even able to develop an atomic bomb far more quickly than anyone in the West had anticipated. Thus, their trial was one of the most memorable events of the Cold War and helped increase public support for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s investigation on anti-American activities.

Julius and Ethel met in 1936 when they were both members of the Young Communist League in New York City. They were married in 1939. Julius was an electrical engineer by trade and worked for the Army Signal Corps beginning in 1940. In 1942, he was recruited as a spy for the KGB by Semyon Semenov. Working with another KGB agent, Alexandre Feklisov, Julius gave the Soviets copies of thousands of classified documents from the Emerson Radio Company. He was also instrumental in recruiting a number of other spies for the KGB including his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, who happened to be working on the top-secret Manhattan Project.

On May 23, 1950, British intelligence officials arrested a man by the name of Harry Gold. Gold had been acting as a courier for the Soviet for many years, passing information collected by spies in England and the United States to the Soviet intelligence officials in Moscow. After his arrest, he confessed to his crimes. That confession resulted in the arrest of David Greenglass. Similarly, Greenglass agreed to testify against his sister and brother-in-law, Julius and Ethel Roseberg, in exchange for a reduced sentence. Because of his testimony, the Rosenbergs were arrested and eventually convicted and executed.

Although there is still some controversy about whether the Rosenbergs were guilty and if actually deserved the death penalty, there is a good much evidence showing that Julius was guilty of committing “conspiracy to commit espionage.” It is not so clear if Ethel was guilty of anything. She was charged along with Julius because she had typed some notes in her home containing nuclear secrets. It is not clear, however, how useful these documents actually were to the Soviet nuclear weapons project. It therefore seems likely that she should have received a lessened sentence. Many observers say that she was tried with Julius so the prosecutors could use her life as leverage in making Julius reveal the identities of his contacts. He refused to do so, however, and both Rosenbergs died in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in 1953.