The Unquiet Death and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg Cold War – Rosenberg Timeline • July 24, 1945 –Truman informs Stalin at • May 31, 1949 – Alger Hiss’s perjury (espionage) Potsdam Conference about A-Bomb trial begins • August 6, 1945 – B-29s dropped a uranium • August 29, 1949 – Soviet Union tests its first gun-type bomb ("Little Boy") on Hiroshima. atomic bomb • June 24, 1948 – Berlin Blockade begins. • October 14, 1949 – top Communist Party-USA leaders convicted in Dennis case. • August 16, 1948 – Harry Dexter White, former Treasury Department official and architect of • January 21, 1950 – Alger Hiss convicted after World Bank and International Monetary Fund, second trial for perjury dies of a heart attack shortly after grand jury investigation of his spying for Soviet Union. • February 2, 1950 – Klaus Fuchs, atomic spy, arrested in Canada • April 4, 1949 – NATO formed The Cold War Cold War – Rosenberg Timeline • February 9, 1950 – Senator Joseph • April 5, 1951 – death penalty imposed on McCarthy in a speech in Wheeling West Rosenbergs Virginia claims there are 205 Known communists working in the State department • November 4, 1952 – Eisenhower elected president (takes office January 20, 1953) • June 25, 1950 – Korean War begins • June 19, 1953 – Rosenbergs executed • July 17, 1950 – Julius Rosenberg arrested • July 27, 1953 – Korean War armistice ends hostilities. • March 6, 1951 – trail of Rosenbergs and Martin Sobell begins Julius Rosenberg, May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953 born New York City of Polish Jewish immigrant parents electrical engineering at City College New York …and joined communist youth organization Graduates and marries Ethel Greenglass becomes civilian employee of Army Signal Corps …and member of Communist Party Ethel (Greenglass) Rosenberg, September 28, 1915- June 19, 1953 born in New York City to impoverished Jewish parents worked as a clerk in shipping company after high school organized workers, fired, joined Communist Party married Julius 1939, two children, stayed home to care for them Klaus Fuchs, Physicist and Atomic Spy, December 29, 1911 – January 28, 1988 born in Germany, joins Communist Party, flees Nazis in Great Britain gets PhD in physics briefly interned when war breaks out works on British atomic bomb research 1943 transferred to US, works at Columbia then Los Alamos on Manhattan Project Morton Sobell, April 11, 1917 – December 26, 2018 born in NYC to Russian Jewish immigrant parents meets Julius Rosenberg at City College.; degree in engineering worked as civilian for Naval Ordinance and GE during war fled to Mexico with family in 1950, “kidnapped” back to US Harry Gold, December 11, 1910 – August 28, 1972 born in Switzerland, parents Ukrainian Jews, family moved to US in 1914 high school and two-years in college during Depression work Pennsylvania Sugar Company recruited to Communist Party by former classmate, passed industrial secrets Judge Irving Robert Kaufman, June 24, 1910 – February 1, 1992 born of Jewish parents, educated in Catholic schools (Fordham Law) worked in various federal prosecutor positions President Truman appoints him a federal judge Note: later in life, he headed an appeals court that quashed a deportation order against John Lennon for his British conviction for hashish possession Emanuel Hirsch Bloch, May 12, 1901 – January 30, 1954 City College, Columbia University private practice, then WWII service retained in 1949 by left-wing Civil Rights Congress to defended African American defendants charged with murder in Trenton New Jersey The Trail to Julius Rosenberg Doug Linder’s Famous Trials recreation of probable connections among Rosenberg case Soviet figures and American spies Arrests February 1950 - Karl Fuchs arrested in England May 1950 – Harry Gold arrested because of Fuchs’s confession June 1950 – David Greenglass questioned about spying and confesses July 1950 – Julius Rosenberg arrested based on David Greenglass’s confession Decision to Arrest and Charge Ethel Rosenberg • "There is no question" that "if Julius Rosenberg would furnish details of his extensive espionage activities, it would be possible to proceed against other individuals. [P]roceeding against his wife might serve as a lever in this matter." J. Edgar Hoover Trial for Espionage Irving Saypol, prosecutor, assisted by Roy Cohn v. Emanuel Bloch, defense lawyer. Jury: 10 white males, one woman, one African American male Prosecution: David and Ruth Greenglass, Harry Gold Defense: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg David Greenberg’s Sketch of Lens Mold Jury Verdict Two days and Eight Hours – only question, putting a mother to death Judge Kaufman’s Sentencing Statement I consider your crime worse than murder. Plain deliberate contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed. In committing the act of murder, the criminal kills only his victim. The immediate family is brought to grief and when justice is meted out the chapter is closed. But 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 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. Supreme Court Intervention? Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas Questions Left Unanswered inappropriate collusion between FBI and Prosecutor Inappropriate prosecutorial actions statute used to try Rosenbergs severity of sentence of Ethel Rosenberg FBI-prosecutorial “conspiracy so immense” International Protest over Pending Execution Execution Venona Rearguing the Trial in Print The Trial as Fiction Trial as Autobiography The Trial in Film.