In the 1930s and ’40s, Julius Rosenberg worked as an electrical engineer. The woman who would become his wife, Ethel Greenglass, was a clerk for a shipping company.
The two met on Dec. 31, 1938, as Ethel, a woman who loved to sing, was waiting to go on stage at a New Year’s Eve benefit show Rosenberg was attending.
Rosenberg was smitten by Greenglass, and the two married months later in the summer of 1939.
The couple seemed to live a typical early 1940s American life, rearing two sons in New York. But their lives were anything but typical as the second World War began.
Amid the patriotic fervor that swept the country during the darkest of times in the early days of World War II, the Rosenbergs’ loyalties were anything but Main Street American leanings.
Julius and Ethel were devoted members of the Communist Party – so devoted, that they spied for the Soviet Union, turning over secrets to the most devastating weapon the world has ever seen – the atomic bomb.
Sixty-six years ago, on June 19, 1953, the Rosenbergs were executed in New York’s Sing Sing prison, the first American civilians put to death for selling government secrets during wartime.
Here’s a look at their story.
What did they do that led to their execution?
The couple sold top-secret plans for building a nuclear weapon to the Soviet Union. At the time, the United States was the only country that had plans for a working atomic bomb.
How did they do that?
As teenagers and young adults both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had Communist leanings, and by the time they met in the late 1930s, they had become full-fledged members of the Communist party.
In 1940, after World War II had started in Europe, Julius became an engineer-inspector stationed at the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratory in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
According to many accounts, he was recruited by the Soviet Secret Police in 1942 and asked to steal research and plans for projects like America’s new guided missile control system, a system that was being developed at Fort Monmouth.
Rosenberg, according to testimony at his trial, provided the Soviet Union with thousands of classified reports up until his firing in 1945 when the U.S. Army discovered his ties with the Communist Party.
How did the spy ring work?
The Rosenbergs were part of a spy ring that included Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass. Greenglass was a machinist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. That lab was where most of the planning, design and experiments took place for the first nuclear bomb the United States produced.
Greenglass would steal information from the lab and turn it over to Julius who, in turn, turned it over to Harry Gold, a Soviet spy.
Gold would then give the information to Anatoly Yatskow, the Soviet General Counsel, who lived in New York City.
How were they caught?
Gold was arrested after he was implicated by a spy named Klaus Fuchs. Fuchs was arrested on charges he spied for the Soviet Union, and confessed to stealing secrets about the Manhattan project, the project to build the first atomic bomb.
Fuchs implicated Gold, who soon after turned on Greenglass. Greenglass was arrested, and while he was being interrogated he told authorities that his sister and brother-in-law were part of the ring, too.
Julius Rosenberg was arrested on July 17, 1950. Ethel was arrested in a few weeks later in August.
What happened at trial?
The couple's trial began on March 6, 1951. The prosecution’s star witness was Greenglass. He told the court that Julius had been a long-time spy, including during the war years, and that Ethel helped by typing up information that Julius had stolen.
The Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29.
On April 5, they were sentenced to death.
What about appeals?
The couple filed seven appeals over a two-year period. Each one failed.
They asked two presidents for clemency – Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower – and were turned down by both.
The execution
After a little more than two years on death row in Sing Sing Prison in New York, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953.
Julius, 35, was brought into the chamber first, around 7:50 p.m. He was strapped into the electric chair, and after three shocks he was declared dead at 8 p.m.
Ethel, 37, was led into the death chamber after her husband had been taken from the room. Before she sat down in the chair, according to reports, she kissed the prison matron goodbye. Ethel Rosenberg received five shocks before she was declared dead at 8:16 p.m.
The two did not speak to each other in the moments before they were executed.
Prior to the execution, Albert Einstein, the man who discovered most of the science that allowed researchers to produce a nuclear weapon, asked for clemency for the pair.
What about the others?
None of the other members of the spy ring were executed for their crimes.
Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, David Greenglass, was convicted of spying and served a 15-year term. He died in 2014.
Harry Gold was sentenced to 30 years in prison and was paroled after 14 years. He died in 1972.
Morton Sobell, who was part of the spy ring along with the Rosenbergs, was arrested and convicted of espionage. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He was released after 18 years. He died on Dec. 26, 2018. He was 101 years old.
Controversy?
For years, supporters of the Rosenbergs claimed they were innocent and had been railroaded at trial. During the years since the Rosenbergs were executed, there have been many documentaries, books and scholarly articles that claim the couple and the others in the ring were innocent.
However, on at least two occasions, Sobell admitted that he was a Soviet spy as was Gold, Greenglass and the Rosenbergs.
Sources: The Guardian; History.com; Biography.com; famoustrials.com
About the Author
