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The Rosenbergs
To the left wing, the Rosenbergs are martyrs of the Communist belief; to the right, they are leaders of a Soviet Union spy ring who had betrayed USA from within. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted in March 1951 for organizing an international spy ring that leaked the most important US military secret - the design of the atomic bomb. Even so, there is still controversy on their guilt, or rather, innocence.

The Cold War

World War II had ended, and the new USSR had become the potential military rival of the United States. The monstrous atomic bomb had taken centrestage in the world of science technology, and many had a good reason to fear its deadly abilities. The United States and Russia were rising to become the top two powers in the World and they competed to build better and mightier atomic weapons in the late 1940s and 1950s. The Cold War had begun. Joe

Whether or not the Rosenbergs were indeed spies for Russia still remains a controversy - some say they were victims of the McCarthy era (possibly the Red Scare too) and Cold War ideology. Around this time, a handful of spies in Ameican and England were exposed in highly publicized trials. Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, was accused of spying for the communists in 1948 and convicted of perjury two years later. Also in 1950, physicist Klaus Fuchs, who helped to create the atomic bomb, was convicted of passing British atomic secretrs to the soviets. These trials were followed by the spyring convictions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1951) and Jack and Myra Sobel (1957).

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spies?

As a youth Julius Rosenberg lived on New York's Lower East Side, and was the son of a Polish garment worker. He developed a passion for politics and at age 16 was a doctrinair member of New York City College's Young Communist League.

He met Ethel Greenglass, who was three years his elder at a union fund-raising party on New Year's Eve 1935. "Ethel looked nervous when Julius first spotted her in a corner of the rented hall. He approached to ask her why. Ethel explained that she had promised organizers that she would sing for the party-goers, but as the time for her performance grew near she was concerned because she had rarely sung publicly. Julius suggested that they go to a nearby privated room where she could practice singing to him. Before the evening was over, Ethel told Julius that she would do whatever it took to help him complete the engineering degree he had been on the verge of dropping in order to pursue fulltime his revolutionary interests." ('The Rosenbergs Trial:Stories of Love & Longing'. Rosenbergs Trial:A Bibliography. 1995)

The couple married in 1939 after Julius graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. The year after, Julius took a job as a civilian employee of the US Army Signal Corps. Both were employed by the US government during the war - Ethel in civil defense and Julius by the army.

The After their marriage, they continued to work for the Communist party, by selling subscriptions of the "Daily Worker" door-to-door, attending meetings and hanging out leaflets. Ethel worked as a secretary for Carl Marzani, a section leader of the Communist party. Michael Rosenberg was born in 1943, and Robert Rosenberg 4 years later. Even though the couple was extremely loyal to their party, the open campaigning stopped in 1943. Army Intelligence investigators began investigation - in 1945 Julius Rosenberg was dismissed from his job because of his political affliations.