02.10.2025

McCarthyite secrets and lies

Gaby Rubin reviews Julia Bracher (director), The Rosenbergs: atomic spies, PBS America

In 1949, for anyone who remembers, the United States found out that the Soviet Union had the bomb. PBS America has just shown a documentary lasting one hour and 10 minutes on the collective paranoia that gripped the US for years thereafter. The film is a ‘curate’s egg’ (good in parts) - the old video and newspaper clips, etc, are very interesting. But some of the narration is so anodyne as to be risible - at least to those of us who have read more deeply.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are names many people are familiar with, and the outcome of their trial is also known widely. But details of their trial and the period of time between trial and execution are not widely known and this film tries to fill in the gaps.

Both Julius and Ethel were children of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Julius had a far more supportive family than Ethel, whose mother was not a kind person - she put Ethel in charge of her younger brother, David, for the whole of their childhood. Ethel wanted to be a singer, but, like most immigrants at the time, the poverty of their family meant she had to work, so she became a stenographer.

All of this became important in the years that followed, although the film tends to take information from a biography of Ethel which concentrated too much on her being a rather emotional female. At the end it says that she did not encourage Julius to confess because she “loved him too much”, But she was also a dedicated communist, and understood all too well what she was doing.

Julius and Ethel were both members of the CPUSA, and persuaded David Greenglass (Ethel’s brother) to join also. In the beginning, they believed that ‘socialism’ of the Soviet variety would save the world.

David was sent to work on the Manhattan Project (where the atomic bomb was made), and was a mechanic in the explosives laboratory. Julius remained in New York and worked as an engineer. David would give Julius information to pass onto his Soviet handler. Importantly, though, when interviewed in later years, his handler said that the information Julius gave him was useless for atomic bomb purposes.

Julius continued giving information after World War II, and for that reason both Julius and Ethel apparently left the CPUSA. Unfortunately for them, however, this did not help them when they were finally arrested.

When the Soviets exploded their A bomb, hysteria gripped the US. Atomic shelters were built all over the country, and endless public information appeared on the radio and television and in newspapers. ‘Duck and cover’ was the prevailing mantra. In my childhood I sat under school desks, or in the hallway of the school (right in front of the glass classroom door!) once a month by state decree, in case the Soviets decided to bomb Philadelphia. We were certainly ‘ducking’, but not necessarily ‘covering’!

Joseph McCarthy was in his element because “Communism is an evil and malignant way of life.” The first ‘spy’ to be arrested was Klaus Fuchs, and the information he gave led to revelations about David Greenglass’s role. At this point, Greenglass’s wife suffered major burns from an accident and was taken to hospital. When Greenglass was threatened with seeing his wife arrested from her hospital bed, he confessed and also revealed the role of Julius, who was arrested.

Ethel told journalists that she was a housewife at home with two young boys and in her statement she said: “Neither Julius nor I have ever been communists, nor do we know any.” That was a monumental error on her part and the journalists took advantage of the untruth (at this time the Korean War began, and it really seemed as though World War III was on its way).

Julius refused to reveal any names and so the FBI arrested Ethel “pour encourager les autres”: ie, to get Julius to confess. They could not afford bail - £100,000 being an astronomical sum at that time.

The two Rosenberg boys were sent to Ethel’s mother, but she abandoned them in a Jewish children’s home, and ordered Ethel to confess and tell the FBI what they wanted to know. This was the first and second abandonment by Ethel’s family. There was a third, and worse, to come.

The lawyers who represented the Rosenbergs were politically savvy, but had no experience of criminal trials. The judge, however, the (Un)Honorable Irving Kaufman, who bragged about giving the Rosenbergs the death penalty, was a close personal friend of J Edgar Hoover, by that time head of the FBI.

They were accused of revealing key information about the atomic bomb - Julius himself believed, and said, that the atomic bomb should be shared by every country. One part of the testimony was a sketch of the cross section of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, which David Greenglass said he gave to Julius. He also said that Ethel typed up the notes from a meeting that they held, which was a lie. But this made Ethel a ‘conspirator’ and sealed her fate. The FBI coached him specifically on her guilt, but how much of Greenglass’s testimony was a lie? Since the FBI blackmailed him from beginning to end, it can be assumed that a good part of it was.

Judge Kaufman believed (no evidence given) that Ethel was the instigator of the spying. When the jury came back with a “guilty” verdict, he went to Hoover to discuss what should be done. J Edgar thought Ethel should not be executed because (a) she was a woman and (b) she had two young boys and it would not look good in the press. Kaufman, however, believed that she was the most important person in this spy ring (no evidence suggested this) and therefore had to be executed, as well as Julius.

The FBI isolated Ethel in Sing Sing Correctional Facility (a male prison) with four female wardens, whose ‘job’ it was to break her, so she would convince Julius he had to confess. But she never tried and he never did.

After a lengthy worldwide movement to save the Rosenbergs, spearheaded in part by the CPUSA, the Supreme Court rejected allegations of a biased judge and their fate was in the hands of president Dwight D Eisenhower. Since Eisenhower also believed that Ethel must have been the main instigator, they were executed on June 19 1953. Julius’s very elderly mother appeared in demonstrations and was prostrate with grief. When Ethel’s mother was interviewed, she told journalists that her daughter had been “nothing but an agent of Stalin”.

When the Soviet and FBI files were opened in 1995, it was clear that Julius had passed on some information - but whether it was crucial information relating to US atomic weapons was still not clear. The film skirts over this contradiction, since it is entitled Atomic spies. Is that what they were? Julius’s handler said not, and for Ethel the files clearly show that even the FBI knew she was innocent.

And the boys? They were finally adopted by friends of the Rosenbergs, and eventually became lecturers/professors. They started the Rosenberg Foundation, which gives money for education and necessities to children of political prisoners from countries all over the world. One Rosenberg granddaughter has made films about the period and another runs the foundation.

The film does not use any quotes or information from or about the family or about their commitment to the cause. It is not a political documentary. It gives a lot of general information, and makes very good use of video clips from the time, but those watching it have to see beyond some of the verbiage.

Having lived with the trial all of my life, and having read books and the letters the Rosenbergs wrote, their commitment was made clear when, on the day before the execution, Julius and Ethel wrote to their sons:

Your lives must teach you, too, that good cannot really flourish in the midst of evil; that all the things that go to make up a truly satisfying and worthwhile life must sometimes be purchased very dearly. Be comforted then that we were serene and understood with the deepest kind of understanding that civilisation had not as yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of life; and that we were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry on after us.