![]() ![]() Their supporters claimed they were being made scapegoats to the Cold War hysteria that was sweeping America. The Rosenberg case garnered worldwide attention. ![]() Both maintained their innocence to the end. They were executed on Jin Sing Sing Prison in New York. A few days later, the Rosenbergs were sentenced to death. This testimony sealed Julius’s fate, and although there was little evidence directly tying Ethel to the crime, prosecutors claimed that she was the brain behind the whole scheme. Gold supported Greenglass’s accusation and admitted that he then passed the plans along to a Soviet agent. Greenglass declared that Julius Rosenberg had set up a meeting during which Greenglass passed the plans for the atomic bomb to Gold. ![]() More harmful, however, was the testimony of Greenglass and Gold. The Rosenbergs were not helped by a defense that many at the time, and since, have labeled incompetent. It began on March 6, and the jury had convicted both of conspiracy to commit espionage by March 29. READ MORE: Why Were the Rosenbergs Executed?īy present-day standards, the trial was remarkably fast. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950. Both Ethel and Julius had strong leftist leanings and had been heavily involved in labor and political issues in the United States during the late-1930s and 1940s. Upon his arrest, Greenglass readily confessed and then accused his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, of being the spies who controlled the entire operation. Gold claimed Greenglass was even more heavily involved in spying than Fuchs. American authorities captured Gold, who thereupon pointed the finger at David Greenglass, a young man who worked at the laboratory where the atomic bomb had been developed. Fuchs almost immediately confessed his role and began a series of accusations.įuchs confessed that American Harry Gold had served as a courier for the Soviet agents to whom Fuchs passed along his information. Federal Bureau of Investigation, gathered evidence that Fuchs, who worked on developing the atomic bomb both in England and the United States during World War II, had passed top-secret information to the Soviet Union. British authorities, with assistance from the U.S. The conviction of the Rosenbergs was the climax of a fast-paced series of events that were set in motion with the arrest of British physicist Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain in February 1950. The husband and wife were later sentenced to death and were executed in 1953. The non-specific language of the act made it possible for the government to target virtually anyone who opposed the war, including pacifists, neutralists, communists, anarchists, and socialists.In one of the most sensational trials in American history, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their role in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets during and after World War II. Under the wording of the act, anyone who publicly protested against the war, or the military draft could be open to investigation and prosecution. While the intent of the act was to define and punish acts of espionage-spying-during wartime, it necessarily placed new limits on Americans’ First Amendment rights.
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