Julius and Ethel, The Commie Spies That Got Corrupted By The Pull of Communism

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, traitors who helped create over forty years of international political conflict. This married couple was found guilty and executed for essentially giving up the secret of the Atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. They were both extremely sympathetic to communist ideals and were apart of communist activism in the United States. What was interesting is that both Ethel and Julius never worked on the Manhattan Project. So how were Ethel and Julius able to get access to the nuclear information, when were they contacted by the Soviet Union, how was information relayed between them and the Soviet Union? In order to understand how they were able to network and release such a powerful secret out of the United States there has to be an understanding of who they were and what their connections were. Julius Rosenberg was an American engineer who was thought of as a ringleader of American based communist engineers who were scoured across the country. He worked in the Signal Core until in 1945, he was dismissed after it was discovered that he had communist ties.  Ethel Rosenberg, her former last name Greenglass, had a brother who was an Army machinist who worked briefly in 1944 in the Oak Ridge project. (1) He was then assigned to Los Alamos, and begun his work with other engineers working on implosion experiments. 

This is when the Soviets come into play to work on gathering information about the experiments. The Soviets became aware of something cooking in Nuclear development as early as September 1941, a full year before the Manhattan Engineer District (MED) was created. Here is when the Soviets took full advantage of Western sympathizers, using spies such as John Cairncross, Klaus Fuchs, and Theodore Hall to gather as much intel and secrets on the nuclear weapons program as possible. (2) (It seems as though the Manhattan Project was only kept a secret to the American people.) It was during this time, that Julius decided that he was going to be a part of the soviet espionage program. He convinced his brother in law David Greenglass to collect and relay information to him so that he could help the Soviets. Information collected by Julius and Ethel was then relayed to other spies that would then relay that information to Russian emissaries and embassies throughout the United States and Great Britain. David himself was finished with the project by 1946, and when Klaus was ousted and laid out his confession to the FBI, David Greenglass was caught. This in the end led to Julius and Ethel being outed as spies, in which they both swore to their innocence and silence. The FBI tried to use the death sentence as leverage to get names out of both Julius and Ethel, but they remained silent. The couple was executed June 19^th, 1952. (1) Both Julius and Ethel were involved in an extremely secret and interconnected espionage system created to exploit the Atomic research system set out by the United States. Because intellectuals at the time were more left leaning, the fact that so many scientists were discovered and found guilty of espionage only strengthened the stereotypes and fears of intellectuals being susceptible to communism that would dominate the 1950’s. Not all conspiracies are filled with crazy hearsay and some even turn out to be true. With the further uncovering of Soviet spies and attempted espionage there was a great deal of anti-communist sentiment that was building in the American subconscious that was waiting for a certain push to bring it out of the shadows and into clear view. 

1.     https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1942-1945/espionage.htm

2.     https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spies-who-spilled-atomic-bomb-secrets-127922660/