Treachery and betrayal
GILES MILTON considers a gripping profile of Ethel Rosenberg, a US woman executed in 1953 for spying for the Soviet Union despite shaky evidence and an international outcry
On a sultry summer’s evening in June 1953, a woman named Ethel Rosenberg was prepared for execution in the high-security Sing Sing prison in New York state. She displayed a steely composure as she was strapped into the electric chair, closing her eyes as the electrodes were attached to her head. She had vowed to die “with honour and dignity”, but the execution did not go according to plan.
After three massive charges had been sent through her organs, her seemingly lifeless body was lifted from the chair. But prison doctors were horrified to notice that her heart was still beating, so she was strapped back into the chair and given a further two bolts of electricity. It took an agonising four and a half minutes before she was finally pronounced dead.
The execution of Ethel Rosenberg was notable for its grim horror, as well as for the fact that she was one of very few women in the US to be put to death for a crime other than murder. Even more sensational was the trial that preceded her execution, which had turned her case into a global cause celebre.
The international media was gripped by the deliberations of New York’s South District Federal Court. The charge itself was straightforward: Ethel Rosenberg stood accused of spying for the Soviet Union, typing up documents stolen from the US military by her husband and his network of communist agents. These were then passed to a Soviet handler in New York, who forwarded them to Moscow. The trial took place at the beginning of the Cold War; little wonder, then, that it received such coverage in the press.
But there were unsettling problems with both the evidence used in the trial and the likely punishment. The evidence submitted by the prosecution was dependent upon statements from untrustworthy witnesses, while the punishment – execution – was highly emotive. Rosenberg was the mother of two young children, aged 10 and six, who would be left as orphans if she and her husband were executed.
The story of this strangely fascinating couple begins in the 1930s, when Ethel and her new husband, Julius, developed a passion for communist ideology. Julius Rosenberg became a card-carrying member
of the Communist Party USA, and openly sold its newspaper, the Daily Worker.
Ethel was equally fervent in espousing the communist cause.
Their political allegiance was not a problem during the war years: after all, the US was in a military alliance with the Soviet Union, and providing vast quantities of hardware to Stalin via the Lend-Lease programme. But the Rosenbergs’ enthusiasm for communism was to become increasingly problematic in the postwar period when the Soviet Union flipped from friend to foe.
“On one side are Americans,” wrote US politician George Murphy, “on the other side are the communists and socialists.” This divide was to prove perilous for the Rosenbergs, because Julius had been passing secrets to the “other side”.
Some of these secrets had been supplied by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, who was working at America’s secret nuclear facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Greenglass passed classified information to Julius Rosenberg, who then gave it to a Soviet handler named Alexander Feklisov. Rosenberg handed over other military intelligence as well, most of it obtained from his communist friends and sympathisers.
Julius Rosenberg’s world began to unravel in 1950 when Klaus Fuchs and Harry Gold were arrested, both of whom had been spying for the Soviets. Gold identified Greenglass as one of his sources. Greenglass, in turn, named Julius as being central to the spy ring. All were in danger of lengthy prison sentences and even execution.
But what of Ethel Rosenberg? Biographer and writer Anne Sebba has dug deep in the archives, and here sheds new light on the day-to-day life of this caring, hard-working mother. Ethel was certainly no Bond girl: dowdy and rather unimaginative, she aspired to have a comfortable home and a happy family, albeit one that fervently believed in communist ideals.
Much of the book focuses on what was to prove the trial of the century – a gripping tale of betrayal, deceit and judicial incompetence. The extent of Ethel’s role in her husband’s spy ring remains open to question. Recent evidence suggests that she was at the very least implicated, if not directly involved, in his espionage. But at the time of the trial the prosecution admitted that the case against her was not strong.
It was dramatically strengthened, though, when David and Ruth Greenglass (her brother and sister-in-law) changed their original story in order to incriminate Ethel and thereby save themselves. In this, they were partially successful. All charges against Ruth were dropped, while David escaped with a lighter sentence than he might otherwise have expected.
Sebba presents the trial in admirable detail, revealing the unfolding drama of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg’s downfall. They were let down, in part, by their inadequate lawyers, who ought to have demolished the false testimony of the Greenglasses. But they also faced a hostile judge and attorney who were determined to see them both found guilty and executed.
An additional problem was the climate of the times. The trial and sentencing came at a time of anti-communist hysteria in America, when Senator Joseph McCarthy was leading his witch-hunt against supposedly subversive elements in society. Even so, with luminaries and celebrities across the globe rallying to her cause, Ethel might yet have escaped the death penalty. Picasso, Einstein and Pope Pius XII pleaded for mercy, along with 3 million petitioners who sent letters to the White House. Renowned philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre went so far as to write an excoriating article for Libération newspaper, accusing the US of criminal folly: “You are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb,”he mocked.
Despite these efforts, Ethel was doomed by the treachery of her brother and sister-in-law. President Eisenhower refused all pleas for clemency, perhaps because he knew that more than 70 per cent of Americans wanted to see both husband and wife put to death.
At one level, Ethel Rosenberg’s story is one of a naive mother and wife executed for a crime she may or may not have committed. But it is also a terrifying indictment of the US legal system, determined to convict an alleged spy on the flimsiest of evidence. One can only hope that such a glaring subversion of justice would not be repeated today.
Giles Milton is a writer and historian, whose most recent book is Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown that Shaped the Modern World (John Murray, 2021)
Much of the book focuses on what was to prove the trial of the century – a gripping tale of betrayal, deceit and judicial incompetence