Who are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg bear the dubious distinction of being the first American civilians to be executed for espionage. The pair were electrocuted on 19 June, 1953 for their roles in passing classified information regarding the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs are often used to illustrate the paranoid anti-Communist climate of the Cold War, with some historians maintaining that the pair were innocent. Both were born into Jewish families, and they joined the Communist party at relatively young ages. During the Second World War, Julius Rosenberg initially worked for the signal corps, but he was dismissed when his links to the Communist party were revealed. He went to work for Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass. Greenglass had worked at Los Alamos, and it was later alleged that Julius used Greenglass to gather information which he then passed on to the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union produced a nuclear weapon shortly after the close of the Second World War, the Unite
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg bear the dubious distinction of being the first American civilians to be executed for espionage. The pair were electrocuted on 19 June, 1953 for their roles in passing classified information regarding the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs are often used to illustrate the paranoid anti-Communist climate of the Cold War, with some historians maintaining that the pair were innocent. Both were born into Jewish families, and they joined the Communist party at relatively young ages. During the Second World War, Julius Rosenberg initially worked for the signal corps, but he was dismissed when his links to the Communist party were revealed. He went to work for Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass. Greenglass had worked at Los Alamos, and it was later alleged that Julius used Greenglass to gather information which he then passed on to the Soviet Union.
