May 29, 2025 • 49 mins
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for espionage in 1953. Whether or not they were both guilty remains unclear, though most historians believe that at least Ethel was innocent. Learn all about this historical stain in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and this is Stuff you should know the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
That's right that we didn't start the fire edition. It's
funny because that may have been the first time I've
heard about the Rosenbergs. Rosenberg's H bomb Sugar Ray, panmun jump.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
What was the last part? I've never known what the
heck he was saying.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
P A n m u n j o m one
word pan muon JOm, Brando, the King and I and
the catcher in.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There all right, back up? What is panmu JOm?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, I don't know, buddy, you'll have to listen to that.
We didn't start the fire History podcast because I was
like earlier today, I was like, oh man, what a
great basis for a history podcast. No, yeah, of course
it was a thing. Know, it's got a shelf life
because they I guess, went through all of them from
one to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So was each each lyric its own episode.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I don't know. I mean I would, I mean, that's
how I would do it, because you can get a
lot of mileage out of that song.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
For sure. That's really cool. That's off.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah I didn't check it out, but.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, I didn't check it out.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
There's a man. Surely they didn't do one each because
there's so many references and only ran for two years
unless yeah, Daily Show.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Maybe they just got bored after like halfway through they forget.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
This anyway, this is a that's Billy Joel's worst song, probably,
And this is a this is a podcast about the Rosenbergs.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, what was his best song? And if you don't
say Uptown Girl, you're wrong?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Probably Miami twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway. That's a
great song. But I'm a Billy Joel, like super I'm
a stand So are you really?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, you didn't know that?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, Glasshouses was the first record ever bought that. I've
seen him live like a dozen times.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, I like, it's kind of cool to listen to
Billy Joel now. But I suffered many decades of people
making fun of me because I would like, go see
a Pavement show and then put on Billy Joel the
next day.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Man, people just stink sometimes.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Hey man, you have a variety of tastes, as.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Do you, for sure, and people should be left alone
and not have their tastes made fun of.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, I'll go to bat for Billy Joel in any
day of the week, my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'll tell you who maybe should have been left alone,
and that's Ethel Rosenberg.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah. I guess we should give us sort of an
overview of this before we dig in.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So the Rosenberg's, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a married couple.
They lived in New York City, were from New York City,
and they were convicted of committing espionage in nineteen fifty
one and executed and put to death, which was This
is a very big deal for a few reasons. One
is because a lot of historians basically say, like, I
(03:13):
don't think Ethel did this, and she was probably innocent,
even though Julius did, And a lot of people say,
and even if he did, and she might have known
about it, Like executing these two people with two young
sons when no one else was getting executed for this
at the time, was a travesty of justice.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, And as we'll see, they got caught up in
Cold War communists aastaria and we're basically put into a
deadly game of chicken essentially, is what it amounts to.
And totally it's one of those blemishes on the Department
of Justice that's never really gonna go away that they
did this. We'll see, we'll explain, but it's just a
(03:54):
sad story all around. We want to say, Julius Rosenberg
definitely was a spy for the Soviet Union, an enthusiastic
one whose spy career spanned more than a decade. Yeah,
Ethyl probably was in some way, shape or format at
least abetting it, if not some way minorly supporting it.
(04:15):
She may have also played an even bigger role. But
I personally do not think that both of them were innocent.
Some people say that, just based on the research I've done,
it just seems clear as day that they weren't both innocent.
But to put them both to death. They were not
the only spies who were caught and convicted during the
Cold War. They were the only spies caught and convicted
(04:37):
during the Cold War who were executed. And that's what
makes the whole thing so significant.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, for sure. So let's go back and talk a
little bit about their early life. We can kind of
re see this first part, but I mentioned they were
both born in New York. Ethel was born there in
nineteen fifteen, had a few brothers, went to Seward Park
High School. She was big into theater, and this would
come up because she loved to sing and dance, and
(05:05):
later on, when she started to get a little political
and was going to union events, she would like perform sometimes,
I guess to you know, just make it a little
more fun, Like, Hey, we're at the union meeting, and
now here's a song from Ethel. I guess at the
time greenngrass.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, the Communist blues with a nice little communist tap dance.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Julius was also born in New York. He's a few
years younger, born in nineteen eighteen to Polish immigrants, and
he also went to Seward Park High School. But I
don't think they knew each other there. It seemed like
they met when he was at City College and she
was working as a secretary.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, and by this time when they met they had
both their interests in communism. It definitely blossomed. Yeah, I
think Julius is even more than Ethel's by them, but
Ethel I think it participated in a strike and was
fired from her workplace for participating in a strike, and
she was like, I think I'm into workers' rights now. Yeah.
(06:02):
So when they met, it was at a charity benefit
for the International Siemens Union SEA M E N and
so they were both like, I'm a communist, you're a communist.
Let's get together and make little communist babies.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
And do the communist shuffle.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, he was definitely more into it. He joined a
group called the Steinmetz Society, who was an affiliate of
the Young Communist League, and he had a couple of
friends that are gonna come up later in a sort
of a small issue, but just put pins in the
names Morton Sobel and Max Elector, who were buddies he
made while he was sort of in this affiliated with
(06:46):
a Young Communist League group society.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they had very similar ideas to his.
And in nineteen forty did you say that he trained
as an electrical engineer. That's what he studied.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I know, but you're right.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, he was hired as an engineer for the US
Army Signal Corps. And when he was hired, he clapped
his hands and rubbed him together and said, what can
I steal and pass along a secrets to the Soviet Union?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Essentially, yeah, basically he had one miner brush with the FBI.
In nineteen forty one, he was called into what's called
a loyalty meeting. I guess just sort of sniffed people
off the case and see how loyal they were to
the United States, because they found a couple of mentions
of Ethel in the FBI files, one that she had
(07:36):
signed a petition for a communist city council candidate and
another that was just someone who gave a tip that
accused her of having Communist leanings. But he was like,
I'm not even into politics that much, which is a lie,
let alone communism, which was also a lie. And so
they pretty much dropped the case, and in nineteen forty
(07:56):
two they moved to the Lower east Side to the
Knickerbocker Village and started having those baby communists, Like you said, is.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The Knickerbocker Village still around? Is that like a neighborhood
in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I don't hear it referenced. I mean, I'm sure you
could tell where it was, but I don't. I don't
know if there are any modern references or signage or
anything like that, or it might be wrong, but I've
never seen it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Maybe it's the KBV that all the cool people in
New York talk about. What is that Knickerbocker village? Gotcha? Okay,
so we've we've laid the foundation. There's Julius, there's Ethel.
Their kids have come along. They're both very loyal Communists,
especially as we'll see, and Julius's big time into spying
(08:42):
and he became a spy. It's not actually clear how
that happened. To tell you the truth, there's many different accounts.
One is Julius's account, which is that he never spied
and it was framed by the government. Yeah, that's demonstrably untrue.
His brother in law, David's account, which will get into
more later, but he basically said that Julius would like
(09:05):
He actually went so far as to go to the
Soviet embassy in New York and said, Hey, can I
do some spying for you guys. I'm a big fan,
like he would he would basically just he wanted to spy.
He was putting himself out there. And then there are
a couple of others that are probably likelier than either
of the other two.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, one Soviet agent named Alexander Feksilov said he was
just introduced to another Soviet agent at a Labor Day
rally in Central Park. His name was Semon Semyonov. And
then other people said, now it was another intelligence person.
So we don't know how he got into it. But
to set the stage of why he might have done this,
(09:44):
it was a time in the nineteen forties when the
US and the Soviets were allied against the Nazis, and
there are historians that say, like Julius didn't think he
was betraying the US. He thought he was fighting fascism
when he sort of started getting into spying for the Soviets.
I don't know about that, but that's what some people say.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, I think that's the most polite way you could
put it. Another way to say it is maybe be
betraying the United States was just an incidental part of it.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, that's a good way.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
But I saw that one of the things he was
well known for. It's like he hated fascism so much
that he would be seen walking down the stream and
be like, I hate you fascism and he'd be punching
the air. Yeah, he hated fascism, So that was one
of his big motives for sure. Yeah, and in nineteen
forty two, so he's hired in nineteen forty I guess
he laid a little bit of groundwork for people trusting him.
(10:38):
In nineteen forty two, he started passing weapons information to
the Soviets, and some pretty big ones too. One of
the ones I saw was a proximity fuse, and that
is a tiny radio that is used in anti aircraft
guns that basically tells the anti aircraft gun okay, that
(10:58):
plane is now in range to do maximum damage to it. Fire. Yeah,
that's definitely something you want to have on your anti
aircraft gun. And he passed that along to the Soviets.
That was just one example, and he was He was
first handled by Semyon Semyonov, who you mentioned earlier. He
got handed off then to Alexander Feklisov, who you also
(11:21):
mentioned earlier. And so those twos account of how he
got into spying are probably the likeliest because they were
his spy masters when he was a spy.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, agreed also during this time, and this is pretty key.
He was trying to recruit other people who had that
sort of same political leanings as him and recruit them.
And one of those people was the aforementioned brother in law.
So this is David Greenglass and this is Ethel's Ethel's brother.
So in March nineteen forty five he was fired from
(11:50):
the Signal Corps. The FBI said, wait a minute, you've
got a Communist Party membership card and it's got your
name on it. And he was like, oh, okay, so
I don't work there anymore. I'm going to start up
my own business with Ethel's brothers, David who I just mentioned,
and Bernie, and it's called Pitt Machine Products. And that
(12:11):
did not go well. I guess that just wasn't a
good business. I think David accused Julius of being a
bad business person. He accused David of being a bad foreman.
And by nineteen forty eight the company was almost not
a company anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
No, it was just down to the original investors. I
just made scare quotes who were Julius and Ethel's two brothers,
David and Bernie. Right, So another big part of this problem,
I guess we should say what we're describing now is
animosity that kind of grew up. Yeah, between David and
Julius specifically, there was just some tension, even though they
(12:49):
still remained in one another's lives, highly involved in one
another's lives. Some historians point to this specific instance of
them going into business together, which is, yeah, all a
bad idea to go into business with family. Uh, across
the board. Okay again, we'll go back to my original motto,
(13:09):
never trust family.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Never trust family. Man. He's been saying that for years.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, Well, Julius Rosenberg would agree with me, so would Ethel.
But so David started to become resentful, and there was
animosity throughout this period, and some people point to that
as the basis of what came later.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, for sure, David had borrowed a lot of money
from Julius without returning it. So the animosity is building.
His wife, David's wife, Ruth, so their sister in law,
the Rosenberg sister in law. She in February of nineteen
fifty was a lit a fire when her nightgown brushed
up against the heater of her apartment. She had a
(13:47):
lot of hospitalization and severe burns and high medical bills
and gave birth to a daughter while she was recovering
from this. So all this is just to basically set up,
like you said that David is he's in a pretty
bad place in his life at this time.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, he's going through a rough patch.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So we'll talk a little bit more about what happened,
because there's different accounts depending on who you talk to.
But what we do know that happened next was that
they started to get caught. So the whole thing kicked
off in February of nineteen fifty when a guy named
Klaus Fuchs, who was a physicist, he was British. He
(14:30):
was discovered by I six as being a Soviet spy,
and he was a big time Soviet spy. Apparently the
spying he did is estimated to have helped the Soviets
skip ahead an entire year in their development of the
atomic bomb. Huge, huge damaging spy. And when he was
(14:51):
caught he implicated others, but he didn't know others' names,
He only knew their code names, and he mentioned Raymond Well.
The FBI, the US government had what are now known
as the Venona Cables. The US had cracked secret cables
that were encrypted that the USSR had sent during World
(15:12):
War two, and in it it talked about a lot
of the spies working for them, and by having these
Venona cables and knowing people's different code names, they were
able to basically root out at least one hundred spies
using these cables. And Klaus Fuchs was first, and then
after Klaus Fuchs was Harry Gold, who was the rayman
that Klaus Fuchs mentioned in his confession.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, that's right, so he was his US contact, Fuchs's
US contact. And then eventually that trickled down and Gold
led them to David green Glass, the Rosenberg's brother and
brother in law.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
So on June fifteenth, nineteen fifty, the FEDS got David
green Glass and they rounded him up, brought him to
HQ to question him, and he was, I'm not into
espionage at all, like deny, deny, deny, which is I
guess the sensible thing to do. But then they said no,
this guy, Harry Gold, identified a photo of you, and
(16:11):
he went, okay, you got me. I am committing espionage.
He was arrested and he said, I passed on this
atomic information and we'll get to how he knew this stuff.
In a minute. I passed it on to Harry Gold
in June nineteen forty five. I was initially recruited to
do this by my wife, Ruth, and Ruth was recruited
(16:32):
by no good brother in law Julius. Key to all
this is that he never mentioned Ethel being involved at first.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. That's a big one right there. Just put that
in your pipe and stick it in your hat, right Yeah.
Should we take a break down and talk about what
came next?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, that's a good cliffhanger.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Okay, we'll be right back. So the FEDS have David
(17:21):
Greenglass now, who was one degree removed from the Rosenbergs,
and he's already implicated Julius, but not Ethel. So the
FBI goes to start talking to Julius. They questioned him
in June of nineteen fifty and I guess basically the
day after they started talking to David Greenglass's brother in law,
(17:42):
pretty quick. Yeah, and they didn't have enough on Julius
to bust him yet. They knew enough because again, remember
they had the Venona cables and all of these people
are mentioned in the Venona Cables. They had basically figured
out who was who, but the Venona cables were so
sensitive and so highly cied the FBI, the Department of
(18:02):
Justice could not use them in court. Oh yeah, so
they could only use them as a background information. And
then they had to extract these confessions and piece together
like as if those things didn't exist. So they knew everything,
but they had to basically get David Greenglass and then
later his wife Ruth to talk.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, which they did over the course of a month
or so. They started talking to Ruth, kept talking to
David and about Yeah, like one month later, July seventeenth,
they said, all right, we got enough, We're going to
arrest Julius. And then a little less than a month later,
on August eleventh, after Ethel participated in the grand jury
hearing for her husband, she was also arrested and they
(18:42):
were both charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. And that
was under the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. Yeah, for some reason, going and being just a
part of a grand jury trial and then getting arrested
right after, I can't compare it to anything, but it
just seems almost mean, like there should be a break
in between, like you think you're going in and you're
gonna be fine and then bam, you get arrested on
the like as you're walking out.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It just just mean, It's like the when they invited
everyone of the football game the criminals.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, that was a good one.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Operation What was that?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Uh? No, that was maybe that was the one where
they created the corpse that they threw overboard World War
two to fool the Nazis.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, that inspired a Broadway show. But I think maybe
a Broadway show should be inspired by the Redskins football game.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I agree, And I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, or at least a Simpsons episode.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet. No, it did. Remember
we talked about it where they had the free boat giveaway.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
That's why I said, wink wink.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Oh god, I didn't know you were winking at me.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
You're like, I thought you were just alurting, right, all right,
So we should tell the story, and this is the
official story according to the Department of Justice, on how
this all went down. So we're just gonna kind of
tell it that way to begin with. Yeah, I mentioned
David Grenglass had atomic secrets and how he got those?
Was he was in the army in nineteen forty three,
and he was transferred to Los Alamos in August of
(20:11):
nineteen forty four and was around the work of the
Manhattan Project.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
All of a sudden, Yeah, he was rubbing elbows with Oppenheimer. Yeah,
so that was August of nineteen forty four when you
started working on the atomic bomb project. A few months later,
Ruth came to visit David and his wife. Yes, his
wife Ruth. So by this time when she came to
visit her husband in Albuquerque, she had actually been recruited
(20:39):
as a spy by at least Julius Rosenberg, and she
essentially went to Albuquerque to convince her husband to become
a spy. All these like, both couples were very much
into the Soviet Union, very much into Communism, so they
have very similar views. This wasn't like, didn't take a
lot of persuading from what I understand, And she basically said, hey,
(21:02):
Julius figured out, probably as Soviet handlers told him that
you're working on as the atomic bomb project. So he
wants you to tell me everything you know about it,
and then I'm going to take it back to him.
Then he's going to pass it on to the USSR
and our glorious leader Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
That's right. January of nineteen forty five, David went back
to New York on furlough, and just a couple of
days after he got back, Julius came around, knocked on
the door of his apartment and he said, Hey, what
else you got for me on this atomic bomb? He said,
write it all down, anything you can think of that's useful.
I'll pick it up tomorrow. His wife, David's wife, Ruth,
(21:41):
was like, his handwriting is terrible. You're not gonna be
able to read this, and Julius said, according to the
DOJ said, not a problem. Ethel did I mention to
he as a secretary, she can type like the wind.
She'll type everything up so it's nice and neat and orderly,
and we'll all be a working family together in this
espionage project.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
All attention will dissolve after we start spying together. And
that same furlough visit in January nineteen forty five, David
and Ruth have dinner with the Rosenbergs and they're actually
introduced to a Soviet operative named Ann Sidorovich and a
really interesting plan is hatched here that ultimately leads to
(22:21):
the downfall of David green Glass. Julia says, hey, Anne
is going to be your contact. Now, she's going to
come visit you in Albuquerque. By the way, Ruth, why
don't you move to Albuquerque to be with your husband
and you guys can spy more effectively together. But when
Anne comes to visit you, just give her all the
information and she will give it to me. We should
(22:44):
say there were people like Anne, like Harry Gold. Their
entire job was to act as couriers. And the reason
why is because the Soviets rightly assumed that the Feds
were following all of their operatives in the United States,
so they couldn't possibly use an operative to connect two spies.
They had to use a third spy to work as
(23:04):
a courier. That's what Anne was doing. But somebody said,
what if Anne, like is indisposed, what if she, you know,
gets a stomach bug and it's just pooping everywhere, or
what if what if she falls in love and runs
off and gets married and frig it's all about the USSR.
And Julius said, I've got a great idea, a plan
B if you will, and That is where the phrase
(23:28):
plan B was coined.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Are you messing with me? Okay? Yeah, So one small
detail here is that Anne was in Denver, so Ruth
would get the information from David and Alberquerque, then visit
Anne in Denver to pass this along and if Anne
had that stomach bug. This was the brilliant plan that
Julius came up with. He said, hey me that jello
box over there, Raspberry, and they were like, we've already uh,
(23:52):
we've already had dessert. Why do you want this jello box?
He ripped the jello box open and took one of
the cardboard pieces and he ripped that in half, handed
Ruth one and said, I'm going to give this other
half to someone with a secret identity that you don't
know yet. That's our Plan B person. So if you
show up to Denver, Ann is not there and somebody
(24:14):
shows up with this jello box half that I'm holding
and showing you, remember it's going to match. You can
put it together like a locket. Yeah, that will be
the confirmation of their identity, which is so low fi
it's actually kind of brilliant.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
It is brilliant, And I think that jello box those
two pieces are in a spy museum somewhere. They got it,
and rightfully so, but it actually came into play because
and did get intosposed in some way that I hadn't
figured out. And Harry Gold, who again one of his
only job was as serving as a courier, he showed
(24:51):
up in New Mexico on David and Ruth's doorstep and said, hey,
Julius sent me I spy. And they said, you got
the the password, you got the code, you got the
I don't know what would you call an object that
serves as a password past key.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
They probably said, do you have the rip piece of
jello box?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Right? Or or they said I am the key master?
Are you the gate keeper?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Goeser?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Sure, So he said, yes, I am the key master.
Check this out. And he produced the half of the
jello box.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And what a moment.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, Ruth, I think it was one of the other ruthor.
David produced the other half and they put it together
and they said, let's let's wrap brother.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So, uh, he's now the guy David writes up as
much as he knows at that point, you know, the
extra stuff about the bomb that he you know, since
the last meeting, and also like, here's some other people
that you know, they're always trying to recruit people within
Los Alamos and elsewhere, and Gold said, great, thanks a lot.
Here's five hundred bucks. Which is interesting because they, I mean,
(25:57):
these thing weren't doing it for money, right, Was this
just a bit of a bonus for being a good soldier?
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I don't jump change back then nor now.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
No, I mean they were definitely true, true believers in
communism and fighting fascism, so maybe it was just a
little a lene yap.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
All right, So they gave him five hundred bucks. September
of nineteen forty five, he went back to New York.
David did on another furlough, and here he provided information
right to Julius's face, said, here's some more notes. I
even drew a sketch of the atomic bomb. Julius is like,
this isn't very good, and he said, no, trust me,
it looks basically like that. And he claims that ethel
(26:39):
typed up the notes, and then Julius burned those notes
in a frying pan, gave David two hundred bucks for
his troubles. And that's where we find ourselves.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, when I saw that frying pan detail. I was like, God,
how long did they have to heat those up to
get them to catch fire? And then I realized that
they were using the frying pan as like basically a fire. Yeah.
I got it now, but it took me a couple
of days.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
That'd be very funny in the movie though. It's just
like just another forty five minutes? What's the flashpoint for
jello boxes?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Right? So are we at another stopping point?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Okay, we're gonna stop everybody if we just hanched down.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
All right, we're back to the contemporaneous present when everyone
had been arrested, basically right out of the gate. David
and Ruth, the husband and wife team the Green Glasses,
hired an attorney named O John Rogue or rog or Rogie,
I don't know you pronounce that r O gge. And
so they had a pretty good attorney, and he said, Hey,
(28:07):
here's what you gotta do. Let me ask you this question. First,
how much do you like your sister and her husband?
He said, because what we should really do if you
want to get out of this is we should blame
the Rosenbergs. And if you can make a case against them,
then they're probably going to let you off pretty light.
And he was right on the money with that line
of thinking.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, and the Green glasses said, sure, why not. I
have a pet theory that if David and Ethel had
been closer in age, she was seven years older than him,
you may not have betrayed her quite as easily. But
seven years is a pretty decent amount of distance between
you and an older sister, and I think that makes
(28:44):
the betrayal all the all the easier.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
My sister's six years older, and I would totally sell
her out.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
There you go, So my pet, my pet theory is correct.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That's right. So they this led to basically a different account.
Some people may say it was an account that shifted.
Other people might say, no, David just basically lied about
Ethel's involvement. Yeah, and you might be wondering, like, well,
what's the rumpus here? Like they had Julius dead to rights,
Like why did they need to get Ethel involved? This
(29:15):
is because they were living in a time of the
j Edgar Hoover FBI and prosecutors like Roy Kohane who
basically were like, hey, if you want to get Julius.
You got to get his wife involved and use her
as leverage, basically.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah. And the other thing too, is even though they
had Julius dead to rights, he was not cooperating in
any way, shape or form. He maintained his innocence until
the very end. And they wanted more spots. They wanted
to flip him and get more and more and more people. Yeah,
so they used Ethel, like you said, as leverage and
they ended up picking her up. Based on the green
(29:53):
Glasses testimony. Remember when David green Glass's first first question,
he does not mention Ethyl. He mentions Ruth, his own wife,
He mentions his brother in law, Julius. He does not
say Ethel was part of the spy ring. Now, all
of a sudden he is saying she definitely was. And
then even more damning before the Department of Justice came
(30:17):
and said like, hey, why did you just touch a
perjury to help our case out. He gave that grand
jury testament, the same grand jury that Ethel was arrested
right after, rather unfairly, and he said, point blank, Ethel
was not involved in this.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, and we know all this is true because in
two thousand and one, David Grenglass said, Yeah, I lied
about my sister because I wanted to save my own wife.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, he lied. During the trial, he perjured himself. He
admitted it. So not only did he perjure himself, he
perjured himself to implicate his sister, which a lot of
people think she was basically innocent, if not fully innocent.
So that's a really hard thing to swallow. But we're
still not done with the d Jane and what they
(31:01):
did here.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, for sure, Julius and Ethel were tried together, along
with Julius's college classmate that I mentioned at the beginning
that I just had to put a pin in Morton, Sobell,
you can take that pen out now. So the three
of them are being tried. And if David and Ruth
hired an attorney that had a pretty great idea to
blame it on the Rosenbergs, they did not hire well
because they hired Emmanuel manny Block, and I think that
(31:27):
was Julius's attorney. They had separate attorneys, and Ethel's was
his father, Alexander, and neither one of these people were
criminal attorneys at all.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Now, Alexander specialized in facilitating the sale of bakeries I
don't get it. I don't understand why they hired them.
I didn't see I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
There had to be some connection. I doubt if they
just yellow page that, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, maybe they were trying to help their careers. I
don't know, but it was.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Somebody probably knows. I bet someone will let us know.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah. So the prosecution had a bunch of federal prosecutors
led by Irving Sapaul, who time called the nation's number
one legal hunter of top communists. Not who you want
prosecuting you if you are a spy for the Soviets.
And then the judge was also not the judge you
(32:15):
wanted to draw. His name was Irvin Kaufman, and he
was known for hating communists and he used his bench
to essentially punish them as harshly as he possibly could.
He was the kind of judge who would actually add
ten years onto whatever sentence the DOJ was asking for
in trials of communist spies. He was that kind of judge,
(32:36):
and that's who they drew, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
To be funny, as if who let us know about
the connection to those attorneys was Billy Joel. What if
he sent us an email said I know this guy's
then attached you'll find an additional verse that I cooked
up for you.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Oh my god, to we didn't.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Start the fire where I explain about the bakery guy.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, and he'd be like, ps, what's this with my
worst song craft? Right?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Oh man, I can't believe I said that out loud. Yeah,
I have to edit that out, which is just what
I meant to say was there is no bad Billy
Joel song.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
That was perfect. There you go. We'll just clip that
out and put it over what you said originally.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
No, I'm going to leave it in. I'm gonna stand
by it. Hey, listen, there's a big hit Billy. If
you're listening. I love almost everything you ever did, but
you can't win them all.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
That's a great lesson to learn. Billy Joel really is.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Okay. So one thing we should point out, getting back
on track here, about this trial and the prosecution, which
hated communist. The jury of twelve had one black man,
one white woman, and no Jewish members on the jury.
The other were ten white Christian men who all were
(33:50):
in favor of the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, which you know in their defense, like you can't
be on a capital jury if you are in favor
of the death penalty, but still it was not the
kind of position that you would want to find yourself in,
like this is.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I never thought about that. I guess that's true.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Huh, yeah, I think we talked about it in the
jury episode. I'm pretty sure that's that's where I got
it from, which means it could be wrong.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
But yeah, well, if you were against a death built,
you just come up the works. They don't want you
in there.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so they're in a pickle, I guess
is what you want to call it. And they're still like,
this is all wrong. We're just we're maintaining our innocence.
And the prosecution said, oh yeah, we'll sit there while
we trot out a bunch of witnesses against you. Guys.
They brought Max Elector, who was a classmate with Morton,
(34:37):
Sobel and Julius. Remember Ruth's brother in law, lewis Abel
and I guess that was from I guess she had
a sister. I didn't see that anywhere. George Bernhardt, who
was Julius's doctor, Harry Gold, the courier for the Soviets,
and Elizabeth Bentley, who was also a former spy, and
(34:59):
each one had quite a story to tell.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, And if you're wondering, like why did they get
Julius's doctor in there, it's because he testified that Julius
had inquired about going to Mexico and like, what inoculations
do I need to get if I go to Mexico,
like very suddenly? And the prosecution was like, hey, and
I just made up for the very suddenly part, But
the prosecution basically took it that way and was like, hey,
this is evidence he was gonna flee, he was going
(35:22):
to go to Mexico. Get that doctor in here.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Right, So let's see Elizabeth Bentley, the former spy. She
said I saw him or somebody who looked like him
once talking to Jacob Golos, who was a known Soviet
operative and the head of the Communist Party of the
USA in Knickerbocker Village. The KBV no less in nineteen
forty two. It's a little thin. Some of the other
(35:45):
ones were a little more damning too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
By the way, I know, I sounded very dumb earlier
when you said KBV right after Knickerbocker Village, and I
didn't pick up on that. In my defense. I thought
it would have been kV because knickerbucker is one word.
That's what can be.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yes, but people like to like.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
No, I agree, I'd like three eating everyone. No, I'm
not a not a one hundred percent more on. I'm
just fifty percent more.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
No one thinks you're a moro on or even a
more on.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You should read the internet.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Uh, people, there's plenty of people who don't like me either.
Oh no, people take it personally. They're people that hate us.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
No, I don't. I don't read that stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Good Again, they can soak their heads.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
That's just that's right, kick sand, touch grass, all those things.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
So like so, like I said, touch grass, you haven't
heard that. No? Is that like you they've been knocked down?
Speaker 1 (36:38):
No, I think touch grass is a more modern thing.
Like when people are just social media fighting, someone will
say touch grass, like, you know, get off the computer.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Go outside. Yes, yes, yeah, okay, I think that's what Weirdly,
I came across that for the first time within the
last couple of weeks, and I promptly forgot it.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, well you know what they should say, smoke grass,
Quit internet fighting, go smoke some weed.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
So what about Max Elektor.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Uh who was that? Oh he was the former roommate
I think. And he came out in testimony against him too.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Right, Yeah, he said Julius tried to recruit me as
a spy.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, that's right, not good.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Lewis Abel, Ruth's brother in law, said, hey, I got
some money from Ruth and David, And if you know David,
that is weird. So I asked him where they got it,
and he said Julius gave it to them, and I
suspect for spying, and and Manny Block stood up as
aid objection, and the judge said, overruled. You call me,
(37:35):
you call me lover.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, his dad's over there rolling some biscuits out.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Oh. I'm glad you said that, because I have to
get this out there. I don't know where it came from,
but it will not leave my head. Sir, mix a
lot buttermilk biscuits song. It's just I don't know that song.
Parts of it are you don't.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
No and I love Sir mexical, I just don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's a weird like novelty song that he had like
very early on surely like.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
The rest of his serious work exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's even more novel than his later stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, oh man Seattle's own what a legend.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I didn't know he's from Seattle. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, because when they did the do you remember the
Judgment Night movie and that amazing soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I remember the movie.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well, the movie wasn't great, but the soundtrack was great
because they paired rock bands with the hip hop artists
because that was a big thing. Oh yeah, and Sir
Mix a Lot and mud Honey repaired because they were
seattleites and their song was awesome.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Nice remember body Count with Iced Tea?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Oh yeah, I saw them at the first Lollapalooza.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
That was when Iced Tea was still making music. And
was it like he's on that He's on that cop
show forever now right?
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah? I mean this is a rapper who had a
song called cop Killer. Yeah, and he plays a cop,
and apparently he's gone through some like metamorphosis in the
eyes of police and people who support police. I bet
from hating him to being like, hey, he's actually kind
of a good guy because he plays a cop on TV.
(39:04):
So well, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
No, I remember the time, boy, he was persona non
grata for law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
For sure, and Icy didn't care. He's like, just watch,
I'll be back in the most surprising way you can
possibly imagine.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
As literal iced tea.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
He's like, well, not that surprising.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Right, the second most surprising thing? You mean you play
a cop on a TV show?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
He said, yep, bingo, that's what he was naring to say. Bingo.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Oh man, we're getting really sidetracked. This is a fun one.
Who knew the Rosenbergs are going to bring this out?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I did not know.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
So it was a three week trial in all, like
you said, they till the end said they were not guilty.
The trial concluded in March of nineteen fifty one guilty
all three defendants sentenced. The third guy, Morton Sobell, to
thirty years in prison, sentence the Rosenberg's to death, saying
their crime was worse than murder and that their work
(39:58):
caused the communist aggression in Korea, so they were really
taking the fall for a lot here. There were a
lot of appeals that were launched by Manny Block and company,
petitioning the Supreme Court delayed things by a couple of years.
All of those failed, but he did launch a pretty
successful media campaign that got a lot of people very
(40:21):
interested in the Rosenberg's sentence.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, he finally got a newspaper to agree to look
into the case. It was the National Guardian, a very
left wing paper, and they investigated it and produced a
very sympathetic, what I take to be, long form article
on the Rosenberg's case, and that that article created a
bunch of other press which spread further and further, really
(40:46):
drummed up public sympathy to the point where they were
holding vigils where a thousand people would show up in
cities around the world in support of them, and people
thought like, this is this is not right. Pablo Picasso,
Albert Einstein, the Pope, they all said like these people
should not be executed, certainly not Ethel should be executed.
(41:10):
And the judges like, I don't, I can't hear you.
He had his fingers in his ears, like la la la.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, and their historians to say like this all just
sort of organically came about because of this press. The DOJ,
of course, was like no, no, no. The Communist Party
of the United States and the Communist Party overall launched
a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Rosenbergs. So you know,
it's a bit of a he said, she said, or
they said they said in this case. But here's the
(41:39):
deal on the execution. You said it was a game
of chicken early on, and I'm sure people that noticed
that that mentioned were like, what is Josh talking about
a game of chicken? And this is what you were
talking about. Was the idea was even Herbert Hoover did
not want to execute them, and it was all a
ploy to try up until the last moment. And there
(42:00):
were supposedly people on the on the walk to the
electric traier that were like, don't want to change your mind,
because you don't have to die right now. If you
want to give up some names.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Yeah, yeah, So the execution was essentially leveraged, just like
they used Ethel. They railroaded Ethyl into a conviction to
use his leverage against Julius to get him to flip
on other spies. They used the death sentence in the
exact same way. And they expected one or both of
them to be like, Okay, yeah, okay, that's fine, it's
(42:28):
not we got two young kids at home. Let's all
just cool off. We'll give you some names and some information.
And Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg did not do that.
And in fact, there was the head I think he
was a deputy Attorney general at the time, who said
Ethel Rosenberg called our bluff. So rather than one party
(42:49):
the DOJ or the Rosenbergs veering off at the last second,
they crashed head on and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg
were put to death, even though essentially no one thought
that was the right thing to do. And that's how
they went down.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, And I mean didn't you find too that Hoover
even himself got in touch with a judge and was like, hey, listen,
we don't want you to install the death penalty here,
and the judge was had his fingers in his ear.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, the FBI took an official stance that that Ethel
in particular should not be executed. That was the official
stance of the FBI, and it still happened anyway.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
It wasn't a good look. I mean, they were worried
about the optics for sure, of especially because they were
Jewish and you know, coming off the heels of World
War two and they're like, they got two young kids.
You cannot execute this woman.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, and even more so Manny Block, Remember he was
like an appeal machine. He had one last Hail Mary.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Appeal that that was on the billboard on the highway.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah, exactly, with somebody holding a check for a million
dollars that he got for them for their bakery. So
he filed one last appeal and he basically said, dude,
you're going to execute two Jewish people at the beginning
of the Sabbath. Do you know how bad that's going
(44:12):
to upset the Jewish community worldwide? And Judge Kaufman, who
was Jewish himself, said, you know, I hadn't really thought
of that, And Manny Block's like, great, so let's postpone
this indefinitely, And Judge Coffin said no, no, we're just
going to move it three hours earlier before the Sabbath starts.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah. They were put to death at eight pm, and
that judge was a real sob. They had a funeral
in Brooklyn in June twenty first, nineteen fifty three, where
ten thousand people reportedly attended. They were buried finally accepted
after some closer cemetery said no, at the Wellwood Jewish
Cemetery in Long Island, and the boys it's just still
(44:52):
hard to believe they didn't know that one of them, didn't,
you know, for the sake of being a parent to
their kids, didn't recant, But they didn't, And those boys,
Robert and Michael, were adopted by Anne and Abel mirror Pole.
Little interesting side note here. Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Which have you ever heard the Susie and the Banshees
version of that?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Oh no, but that's great.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Another reference to the first Lallapalooza. Even who knew?
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Wow, that's really something.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Wow, I know, right, did not expect that. Billy Joel
is spinning in his piano stool right now.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
He's like, I know, I should have accepted that offer.
I know.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Michael got a PhD In economics, and Robert Rosenberg became
an attorney.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
And both of them, they've dedicated their lives of trying
to clear their parents' names. Finally, after years and years
and years, they admitted, like, Okay, dad was a spy,
but not mom. Yeah, and you said that. They were
criticized by some people for basically choosing loyalty to Joseph
Stalin over their two children and leaving them behind, and
David Green Glass again who lied to and got his
(46:03):
sister and brother in law killed. I said they were stupid.
He said, that was a really stupid thing for them
to do, to not accept some sort of bargain to
take the death penalty off the table. That's his opinion
on the whole thing. Wow, that's what I said too. Yeah,
and oh, I should say real quick, the reason that
(46:24):
the brothers the sons finally were like, okay, Dad was
a spy was because those Venona tables we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, they were.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Finally released starting in the nineties, and it showed quite
clearly that Julius was a very enthusiastic spy for the
Soviet Union and probably Ethel definitely knew about it. But
she may have been involved in recruiting Ruth, and if
she did that, she was definitely a spy. But again,
that doesn't change most people's thoughts that they probably should
(46:55):
not have been executed.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yeah, yeah, totally, because I mean that's a whole differferent argument.
You know, it's like, maybe they were guilty, but you
should not have put them to death. That's what a
lot of people seem to think.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, I mean, including people from their own spiring didn't
even come close to the death sentence. It was just
specifically leverage that just never got taken away because the
government wasn't about to be like, okay, you got us,
all right, we won't kill you.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, yeah, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
Boy. Yeah, this is a fun win. And there was
a lot of jokes. I hope it didn't come across
as insensitive. I mean that's kind of what we do here,
so not be insensitive. Try to you know, kind of
make jokes about stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Yeah, if you can't laugh about everything, then what can
you laugh at?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Nothing?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Exactly? Actually I don't know if that's exactly true, but
still yeah, since Chuck said exactly.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
That's not to examine that way exactly.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
It's listener mail time.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
That's right. This is about we heard from a lot
of our Canadian friends. We love it when Canada points
out something that they know that we don't, and in
this case, it's about Cole's Notes. A great episode about
the Cliffs Notes guys. The name rings of Bell to
me probably through American movies and TV, but as a
millennial Canadian, I'm far more familiar with Cole's Notes. Cole
(48:16):
was a legendary bookstore across Canada, and so every location
had a stand of Cole's Notes booklets focused on books
and plays covered in the Canadian school curriculum. I even
remember reading them in school alongside Shakespeare plays to understand
the better. Yes, they were often used to cram before
a test without reading the material. They're also used as
coal intended chapters. Slash Indigo is the big Canadian book
(48:38):
read tailor now and they bought out the Cole's locations,
but they still print and sell Cole's Notes today, so
that guy did alright in the Canadian market. Thanks for
making me a little smarter each week. And that is
from Natalie gud orm Son Catormson, great name from Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Thanks a lot, Natalie, Thanks for making us a little
smarter this week. We appreciate it big time. Yeah. And
if you want to be like Natalie and tell us
something we didn't know. We love that kind of thing.
You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and this is Stuff you should know the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
That's right that we didn't start the fire edition. It's
funny because that may have been the first time I've
heard about the Rosenbergs. Rosenberg's H bomb Sugar Ray, panmun jump.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
What was the last part? I've never known what the
heck he was saying.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
P A n m u n j o m one
word pan muon JOm, Brando, the King and I and
the catcher in.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
There all right, back up? What is panmu JOm?
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Well, I don't know, buddy, you'll have to listen to that.
We didn't start the fire History podcast because I was
like earlier today, I was like, oh man, what a
great basis for a history podcast. No, yeah, of course
it was a thing. Know, it's got a shelf life
because they I guess, went through all of them from
one to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
So was each each lyric its own episode.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
I don't know. I mean I would, I mean, that's
how I would do it, because you can get a
lot of mileage out of that song.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
For sure. That's really cool. That's off.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yeah I didn't check it out, but.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, I didn't check it out.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
There's a man. Surely they didn't do one each because
there's so many references and only ran for two years
unless yeah, Daily Show.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Maybe they just got bored after like halfway through they forget.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
This anyway, this is a that's Billy Joel's worst song, probably,
And this is a this is a podcast about the Rosenbergs.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, what was his best song? And if you don't
say Uptown Girl, you're wrong?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Probably Miami twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway. That's a
great song. But I'm a Billy Joel, like super I'm
a stand So are you really?
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, you didn't know that?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
No, I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, Glasshouses was the first record ever bought that. I've
seen him live like a dozen times.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, I like, it's kind of cool to listen to
Billy Joel now. But I suffered many decades of people
making fun of me because I would like, go see
a Pavement show and then put on Billy Joel the
next day.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Man, people just stink sometimes.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Hey man, you have a variety of tastes, as.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Do you, for sure, and people should be left alone
and not have their tastes made fun of.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, I'll go to bat for Billy Joel in any
day of the week, my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
I'll tell you who maybe should have been left alone,
and that's Ethel Rosenberg.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Yeah. I guess we should give us sort of an
overview of this before we dig in.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, fair enough.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
So the Rosenberg's, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were a married couple.
They lived in New York City, were from New York City,
and they were convicted of committing espionage in nineteen fifty
one and executed and put to death, which was This
is a very big deal for a few reasons. One
is because a lot of historians basically say, like, I
(03:13):
don't think Ethel did this, and she was probably innocent,
even though Julius did, And a lot of people say,
and even if he did, and she might have known
about it, Like executing these two people with two young
sons when no one else was getting executed for this
at the time, was a travesty of justice.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, And as we'll see, they got caught up in
Cold War communists aastaria and we're basically put into a
deadly game of chicken essentially, is what it amounts to.
And totally it's one of those blemishes on the Department
of Justice that's never really gonna go away that they
did this. We'll see, we'll explain, but it's just a
(03:54):
sad story all around. We want to say, Julius Rosenberg
definitely was a spy for the Soviet Union, an enthusiastic
one whose spy career spanned more than a decade. Yeah,
Ethyl probably was in some way, shape or format at
least abetting it, if not some way minorly supporting it.
(04:15):
She may have also played an even bigger role. But
I personally do not think that both of them were innocent.
Some people say that, just based on the research I've done,
it just seems clear as day that they weren't both innocent.
But to put them both to death. They were not
the only spies who were caught and convicted during the
Cold War. They were the only spies caught and convicted
(04:37):
during the Cold War who were executed. And that's what
makes the whole thing so significant.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, for sure. So let's go back and talk a
little bit about their early life. We can kind of
re see this first part, but I mentioned they were
both born in New York. Ethel was born there in
nineteen fifteen, had a few brothers, went to Seward Park
High School. She was big into theater, and this would
come up because she loved to sing and dance, and
(05:05):
later on, when she started to get a little political
and was going to union events, she would like perform sometimes,
I guess to you know, just make it a little
more fun, Like, Hey, we're at the union meeting, and
now here's a song from Ethel. I guess at the
time greenngrass.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, the Communist blues with a nice little communist tap dance.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Julius was also born in New York. He's a few
years younger, born in nineteen eighteen to Polish immigrants, and
he also went to Seward Park High School. But I
don't think they knew each other there. It seemed like
they met when he was at City College and she
was working as a secretary.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
Yeah, and by this time when they met they had
both their interests in communism. It definitely blossomed. Yeah, I
think Julius is even more than Ethel's by them, but
Ethel I think it participated in a strike and was
fired from her workplace for participating in a strike, and
she was like, I think I'm into workers' rights now. Yeah.
(06:02):
So when they met, it was at a charity benefit
for the International Siemens Union SEA M E N and
so they were both like, I'm a communist, you're a communist.
Let's get together and make little communist babies.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
And do the communist shuffle.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, he was definitely more into it. He joined a
group called the Steinmetz Society, who was an affiliate of
the Young Communist League, and he had a couple of
friends that are gonna come up later in a sort
of a small issue, but just put pins in the
names Morton Sobel and Max Elector, who were buddies he
made while he was sort of in this affiliated with
(06:46):
a Young Communist League group society.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And they had very similar ideas to his.
And in nineteen forty did you say that he trained
as an electrical engineer. That's what he studied.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
I know, but you're right.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah, he was hired as an engineer for the US
Army Signal Corps. And when he was hired, he clapped
his hands and rubbed him together and said, what can
I steal and pass along a secrets to the Soviet Union?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Essentially, yeah, basically he had one miner brush with the FBI.
In nineteen forty one, he was called into what's called
a loyalty meeting. I guess just sort of sniffed people
off the case and see how loyal they were to
the United States, because they found a couple of mentions
of Ethel in the FBI files, one that she had
(07:36):
signed a petition for a communist city council candidate and
another that was just someone who gave a tip that
accused her of having Communist leanings. But he was like,
I'm not even into politics that much, which is a lie,
let alone communism, which was also a lie. And so
they pretty much dropped the case, and in nineteen forty
(07:56):
two they moved to the Lower east Side to the
Knickerbocker Village and started having those baby communists, Like you said, is.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The Knickerbocker Village still around? Is that like a neighborhood
in the Lower east Side.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
I don't hear it referenced. I mean, I'm sure you
could tell where it was, but I don't. I don't
know if there are any modern references or signage or
anything like that, or it might be wrong, but I've
never seen it.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Maybe it's the KBV that all the cool people in
New York talk about. What is that Knickerbocker village? Gotcha? Okay,
so we've we've laid the foundation. There's Julius, there's Ethel.
Their kids have come along. They're both very loyal Communists,
especially as we'll see, and Julius's big time into spying
(08:42):
and he became a spy. It's not actually clear how
that happened. To tell you the truth, there's many different accounts.
One is Julius's account, which is that he never spied
and it was framed by the government. Yeah, that's demonstrably untrue.
His brother in law, David's account, which will get into
more later, but he basically said that Julius would like
(09:05):
He actually went so far as to go to the
Soviet embassy in New York and said, Hey, can I
do some spying for you guys. I'm a big fan,
like he would he would basically just he wanted to spy.
He was putting himself out there. And then there are
a couple of others that are probably likelier than either
of the other two.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Yeah, one Soviet agent named Alexander Feksilov said he was
just introduced to another Soviet agent at a Labor Day
rally in Central Park. His name was Semon Semyonov. And
then other people said, now it was another intelligence person.
So we don't know how he got into it. But
to set the stage of why he might have done this,
(09:44):
it was a time in the nineteen forties when the
US and the Soviets were allied against the Nazis, and
there are historians that say, like Julius didn't think he
was betraying the US. He thought he was fighting fascism
when he sort of started getting into spying for the Soviets.
I don't know about that, but that's what some people say.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Yeah, I think that's the most polite way you could
put it. Another way to say it is maybe be
betraying the United States was just an incidental part of it.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, that's a good way.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
But I saw that one of the things he was
well known for. It's like he hated fascism so much
that he would be seen walking down the stream and
be like, I hate you fascism and he'd be punching
the air. Yeah, he hated fascism, So that was one
of his big motives for sure. Yeah, and in nineteen
forty two, so he's hired in nineteen forty I guess
he laid a little bit of groundwork for people trusting him.
(10:38):
In nineteen forty two, he started passing weapons information to
the Soviets, and some pretty big ones too. One of
the ones I saw was a proximity fuse, and that
is a tiny radio that is used in anti aircraft
guns that basically tells the anti aircraft gun okay, that
(10:58):
plane is now in range to do maximum damage to it. Fire. Yeah,
that's definitely something you want to have on your anti
aircraft gun. And he passed that along to the Soviets.
That was just one example, and he was He was
first handled by Semyon Semyonov, who you mentioned earlier. He
got handed off then to Alexander Feklisov, who you also
(11:21):
mentioned earlier. And so those twos account of how he
got into spying are probably the likeliest because they were
his spy masters when he was a spy.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Yeah, agreed also during this time, and this is pretty key.
He was trying to recruit other people who had that
sort of same political leanings as him and recruit them.
And one of those people was the aforementioned brother in law.
So this is David Greenglass and this is Ethel's Ethel's brother.
So in March nineteen forty five he was fired from
(11:50):
the Signal Corps. The FBI said, wait a minute, you've
got a Communist Party membership card and it's got your
name on it. And he was like, oh, okay, so
I don't work there anymore. I'm going to start up
my own business with Ethel's brothers, David who I just mentioned,
and Bernie, and it's called Pitt Machine Products. And that
(12:11):
did not go well. I guess that just wasn't a
good business. I think David accused Julius of being a
bad business person. He accused David of being a bad foreman.
And by nineteen forty eight the company was almost not
a company anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
No, it was just down to the original investors. I
just made scare quotes who were Julius and Ethel's two brothers,
David and Bernie. Right, So another big part of this problem,
I guess we should say what we're describing now is
animosity that kind of grew up. Yeah, between David and
Julius specifically, there was just some tension, even though they
(12:49):
still remained in one another's lives, highly involved in one
another's lives. Some historians point to this specific instance of
them going into business together, which is, yeah, all a
bad idea to go into business with family. Uh, across
the board. Okay again, we'll go back to my original motto,
(13:09):
never trust family.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Never trust family. Man. He's been saying that for years.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Yeah, Well, Julius Rosenberg would agree with me, so would Ethel.
But so David started to become resentful, and there was
animosity throughout this period, and some people point to that
as the basis of what came later.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, for sure, David had borrowed a lot of money
from Julius without returning it. So the animosity is building.
His wife, David's wife, Ruth, so their sister in law,
the Rosenberg sister in law. She in February of nineteen
fifty was a lit a fire when her nightgown brushed
up against the heater of her apartment. She had a
(13:47):
lot of hospitalization and severe burns and high medical bills
and gave birth to a daughter while she was recovering
from this. So all this is just to basically set up,
like you said that David is he's in a pretty
bad place in his life at this time.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Yeah, he's going through a rough patch.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So we'll talk a little bit more about what happened,
because there's different accounts depending on who you talk to.
But what we do know that happened next was that
they started to get caught. So the whole thing kicked
off in February of nineteen fifty when a guy named
Klaus Fuchs, who was a physicist, he was British. He
(14:30):
was discovered by I six as being a Soviet spy,
and he was a big time Soviet spy. Apparently the
spying he did is estimated to have helped the Soviets
skip ahead an entire year in their development of the
atomic bomb. Huge, huge damaging spy. And when he was
(14:51):
caught he implicated others, but he didn't know others' names,
He only knew their code names, and he mentioned Raymond Well.
The FBI, the US government had what are now known
as the Venona Cables. The US had cracked secret cables
that were encrypted that the USSR had sent during World
(15:12):
War two, and in it it talked about a lot
of the spies working for them, and by having these
Venona cables and knowing people's different code names, they were
able to basically root out at least one hundred spies
using these cables. And Klaus Fuchs was first, and then
after Klaus Fuchs was Harry Gold, who was the rayman
that Klaus Fuchs mentioned in his confession.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, that's right, so he was his US contact, Fuchs's
US contact. And then eventually that trickled down and Gold
led them to David green Glass, the Rosenberg's brother and
brother in law.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
So on June fifteenth, nineteen fifty, the FEDS got David
green Glass and they rounded him up, brought him to
HQ to question him, and he was, I'm not into
espionage at all, like deny, deny, deny, which is I
guess the sensible thing to do. But then they said no,
this guy, Harry Gold, identified a photo of you, and
(16:11):
he went, okay, you got me. I am committing espionage.
He was arrested and he said, I passed on this
atomic information and we'll get to how he knew this stuff.
In a minute. I passed it on to Harry Gold
in June nineteen forty five. I was initially recruited to
do this by my wife, Ruth, and Ruth was recruited
(16:32):
by no good brother in law Julius. Key to all
this is that he never mentioned Ethel being involved at first.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah. That's a big one right there. Just put that
in your pipe and stick it in your hat, right Yeah.
Should we take a break down and talk about what
came next?
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, that's a good cliffhanger.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Okay, we'll be right back. So the FEDS have David
(17:21):
Greenglass now, who was one degree removed from the Rosenbergs,
and he's already implicated Julius, but not Ethel. So the
FBI goes to start talking to Julius. They questioned him
in June of nineteen fifty and I guess basically the
day after they started talking to David Greenglass's brother in law,
(17:42):
pretty quick. Yeah, and they didn't have enough on Julius
to bust him yet. They knew enough because again, remember
they had the Venona cables and all of these people
are mentioned in the Venona Cables. They had basically figured
out who was who, but the Venona cables were so
sensitive and so highly cied the FBI, the Department of
(18:02):
Justice could not use them in court. Oh yeah, so
they could only use them as a background information. And
then they had to extract these confessions and piece together
like as if those things didn't exist. So they knew everything,
but they had to basically get David Greenglass and then
later his wife Ruth to talk.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, which they did over the course of a month
or so. They started talking to Ruth, kept talking to
David and about Yeah, like one month later, July seventeenth,
they said, all right, we got enough, We're going to
arrest Julius. And then a little less than a month later,
on August eleventh, after Ethel participated in the grand jury
hearing for her husband, she was also arrested and they
(18:42):
were both charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. And that
was under the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah. Yeah, for some reason, going and being just a
part of a grand jury trial and then getting arrested
right after, I can't compare it to anything, but it
just seems almost mean, like there should be a break
in between, like you think you're going in and you're
gonna be fine and then bam, you get arrested on
the like as you're walking out.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
It just just mean, It's like the when they invited
everyone of the football game the criminals.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, that was a good one.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Operation What was that?
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Uh? No, that was maybe that was the one where
they created the corpse that they threw overboard World War
two to fool the Nazis.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, that inspired a Broadway show. But I think maybe
a Broadway show should be inspired by the Redskins football game.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
I agree, And I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, or at least a Simpsons episode.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet. No, it did. Remember
we talked about it where they had the free boat giveaway.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
That's why I said, wink wink.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Oh god, I didn't know you were winking at me.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
You're like, I thought you were just alurting, right, all right,
So we should tell the story, and this is the
official story according to the Department of Justice, on how
this all went down. So we're just gonna kind of
tell it that way to begin with. Yeah, I mentioned
David Grenglass had atomic secrets and how he got those?
Was he was in the army in nineteen forty three,
and he was transferred to Los Alamos in August of
(20:11):
nineteen forty four and was around the work of the
Manhattan Project.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
All of a sudden, Yeah, he was rubbing elbows with Oppenheimer. Yeah,
so that was August of nineteen forty four when you
started working on the atomic bomb project. A few months later,
Ruth came to visit David and his wife. Yes, his
wife Ruth. So by this time when she came to
visit her husband in Albuquerque, she had actually been recruited
(20:39):
as a spy by at least Julius Rosenberg, and she
essentially went to Albuquerque to convince her husband to become
a spy. All these like, both couples were very much
into the Soviet Union, very much into Communism, so they
have very similar views. This wasn't like, didn't take a
lot of persuading from what I understand, And she basically said, hey,
(21:02):
Julius figured out, probably as Soviet handlers told him that
you're working on as the atomic bomb project. So he
wants you to tell me everything you know about it,
and then I'm going to take it back to him.
Then he's going to pass it on to the USSR
and our glorious leader Joseph Stalin.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
That's right. January of nineteen forty five, David went back
to New York on furlough, and just a couple of
days after he got back, Julius came around, knocked on
the door of his apartment and he said, Hey, what
else you got for me on this atomic bomb? He said,
write it all down, anything you can think of that's useful.
I'll pick it up tomorrow. His wife, David's wife, Ruth,
(21:41):
was like, his handwriting is terrible. You're not gonna be
able to read this, and Julius said, according to the
DOJ said, not a problem. Ethel did I mention to
he as a secretary, she can type like the wind.
She'll type everything up so it's nice and neat and orderly,
and we'll all be a working family together in this
espionage project.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
All attention will dissolve after we start spying together. And
that same furlough visit in January nineteen forty five, David
and Ruth have dinner with the Rosenbergs and they're actually
introduced to a Soviet operative named Ann Sidorovich and a
really interesting plan is hatched here that ultimately leads to
(22:21):
the downfall of David green Glass. Julia says, hey, Anne
is going to be your contact. Now, she's going to
come visit you in Albuquerque. By the way, Ruth, why
don't you move to Albuquerque to be with your husband
and you guys can spy more effectively together. But when
Anne comes to visit you, just give her all the
information and she will give it to me. We should
(22:44):
say there were people like Anne, like Harry Gold. Their
entire job was to act as couriers. And the reason
why is because the Soviets rightly assumed that the Feds
were following all of their operatives in the United States,
so they couldn't possibly use an operative to connect two spies.
They had to use a third spy to work as
(23:04):
a courier. That's what Anne was doing. But somebody said,
what if Anne, like is indisposed, what if she, you know,
gets a stomach bug and it's just pooping everywhere, or
what if what if she falls in love and runs
off and gets married and frig it's all about the USSR.
And Julius said, I've got a great idea, a plan
B if you will, and That is where the phrase
(23:28):
plan B was coined.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Are you messing with me? Okay? Yeah, So one small
detail here is that Anne was in Denver, so Ruth
would get the information from David and Alberquerque, then visit
Anne in Denver to pass this along and if Anne
had that stomach bug. This was the brilliant plan that
Julius came up with. He said, hey me that jello
box over there, Raspberry, and they were like, we've already uh,
(23:52):
we've already had dessert. Why do you want this jello box?
He ripped the jello box open and took one of
the cardboard pieces and he ripped that in half, handed
Ruth one and said, I'm going to give this other
half to someone with a secret identity that you don't
know yet. That's our Plan B person. So if you
show up to Denver, Ann is not there and somebody
(24:14):
shows up with this jello box half that I'm holding
and showing you, remember it's going to match. You can
put it together like a locket. Yeah, that will be
the confirmation of their identity, which is so low fi
it's actually kind of brilliant.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
It is brilliant, And I think that jello box those
two pieces are in a spy museum somewhere. They got it,
and rightfully so, but it actually came into play because
and did get intosposed in some way that I hadn't
figured out. And Harry Gold, who again one of his
only job was as serving as a courier, he showed
(24:51):
up in New Mexico on David and Ruth's doorstep and said, hey,
Julius sent me I spy. And they said, you got
the the password, you got the code, you got the
I don't know what would you call an object that
serves as a password past key.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
They probably said, do you have the rip piece of
jello box?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
Right? Or or they said I am the key master?
Are you the gate keeper?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Goeser?
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Sure, So he said, yes, I am the key master.
Check this out. And he produced the half of the
jello box.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And what a moment.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, Ruth, I think it was one of the other ruthor.
David produced the other half and they put it together
and they said, let's let's wrap brother.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So, uh, he's now the guy David writes up as
much as he knows at that point, you know, the
extra stuff about the bomb that he you know, since
the last meeting, and also like, here's some other people
that you know, they're always trying to recruit people within
Los Alamos and elsewhere, and Gold said, great, thanks a lot.
Here's five hundred bucks. Which is interesting because they, I mean,
(25:57):
these thing weren't doing it for money, right, Was this
just a bit of a bonus for being a good soldier?
Speaker 2 (26:02):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I don't jump change back then nor now.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
No, I mean they were definitely true, true believers in
communism and fighting fascism, so maybe it was just a
little a lene yap.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
All right, So they gave him five hundred bucks. September
of nineteen forty five, he went back to New York.
David did on another furlough, and here he provided information
right to Julius's face, said, here's some more notes. I
even drew a sketch of the atomic bomb. Julius is like,
this isn't very good, and he said, no, trust me,
it looks basically like that. And he claims that ethel
(26:39):
typed up the notes, and then Julius burned those notes
in a frying pan, gave David two hundred bucks for
his troubles. And that's where we find ourselves.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, when I saw that frying pan detail. I was like, God,
how long did they have to heat those up to
get them to catch fire? And then I realized that
they were using the frying pan as like basically a fire. Yeah.
I got it now, but it took me a couple
of days.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
That'd be very funny in the movie though. It's just
like just another forty five minutes? What's the flashpoint for
jello boxes?
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Right? So are we at another stopping point?
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Okay, we're gonna stop everybody if we just hanched down.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
All right, we're back to the contemporaneous present when everyone
had been arrested, basically right out of the gate. David
and Ruth, the husband and wife team the Green Glasses,
hired an attorney named O John Rogue or rog or Rogie,
I don't know you pronounce that r O gge. And
so they had a pretty good attorney, and he said, Hey,
(28:07):
here's what you gotta do. Let me ask you this question. First,
how much do you like your sister and her husband?
He said, because what we should really do if you
want to get out of this is we should blame
the Rosenbergs. And if you can make a case against them,
then they're probably going to let you off pretty light.
And he was right on the money with that line
of thinking.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Yeah, and the Green glasses said, sure, why not. I
have a pet theory that if David and Ethel had
been closer in age, she was seven years older than him,
you may not have betrayed her quite as easily. But
seven years is a pretty decent amount of distance between
you and an older sister, and I think that makes
(28:44):
the betrayal all the all the easier.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
My sister's six years older, and I would totally sell
her out.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
There you go, So my pet, my pet theory is correct.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That's right. So they this led to basically a different account.
Some people may say it was an account that shifted.
Other people might say, no, David just basically lied about
Ethel's involvement. Yeah, and you might be wondering, like, well,
what's the rumpus here? Like they had Julius dead to rights,
Like why did they need to get Ethel involved? This
(29:15):
is because they were living in a time of the
j Edgar Hoover FBI and prosecutors like Roy Kohane who
basically were like, hey, if you want to get Julius.
You got to get his wife involved and use her
as leverage, basically.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah. And the other thing too, is even though they
had Julius dead to rights, he was not cooperating in
any way, shape or form. He maintained his innocence until
the very end. And they wanted more spots. They wanted
to flip him and get more and more and more people. Yeah,
so they used Ethel, like you said, as leverage and
they ended up picking her up. Based on the green
(29:53):
Glasses testimony. Remember when David green Glass's first first question,
he does not mention Ethyl. He mentions Ruth, his own wife,
He mentions his brother in law, Julius. He does not
say Ethel was part of the spy ring. Now, all
of a sudden he is saying she definitely was. And
then even more damning before the Department of Justice came
(30:17):
and said like, hey, why did you just touch a
perjury to help our case out. He gave that grand
jury testament, the same grand jury that Ethel was arrested
right after, rather unfairly, and he said, point blank, Ethel
was not involved in this.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, and we know all this is true because in
two thousand and one, David Grenglass said, Yeah, I lied
about my sister because I wanted to save my own wife.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, he lied. During the trial, he perjured himself. He
admitted it. So not only did he perjure himself, he
perjured himself to implicate his sister, which a lot of
people think she was basically innocent, if not fully innocent.
So that's a really hard thing to swallow. But we're
still not done with the d Jane and what they
(31:01):
did here.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, for sure, Julius and Ethel were tried together, along
with Julius's college classmate that I mentioned at the beginning
that I just had to put a pin in Morton, Sobell,
you can take that pen out now. So the three
of them are being tried. And if David and Ruth
hired an attorney that had a pretty great idea to
blame it on the Rosenbergs, they did not hire well
because they hired Emmanuel manny Block, and I think that
(31:27):
was Julius's attorney. They had separate attorneys, and Ethel's was
his father, Alexander, and neither one of these people were
criminal attorneys at all.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Now, Alexander specialized in facilitating the sale of bakeries I
don't get it. I don't understand why they hired them.
I didn't see I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
There had to be some connection. I doubt if they
just yellow page that, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Yeah, maybe they were trying to help their careers. I
don't know, but it was.
Speaker 1 (31:53):
Somebody probably knows. I bet someone will let us know.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah. So the prosecution had a bunch of federal prosecutors
led by Irving Sapaul, who time called the nation's number
one legal hunter of top communists. Not who you want
prosecuting you if you are a spy for the Soviets.
And then the judge was also not the judge you
(32:15):
wanted to draw. His name was Irvin Kaufman, and he
was known for hating communists and he used his bench
to essentially punish them as harshly as he possibly could.
He was the kind of judge who would actually add
ten years onto whatever sentence the DOJ was asking for
in trials of communist spies. He was that kind of judge,
(32:36):
and that's who they drew, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
To be funny, as if who let us know about
the connection to those attorneys was Billy Joel. What if
he sent us an email said I know this guy's
then attached you'll find an additional verse that I cooked
up for you.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Oh my god, to we didn't.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
Start the fire where I explain about the bakery guy.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah, and he'd be like, ps, what's this with my
worst song craft? Right?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Oh man, I can't believe I said that out loud. Yeah,
I have to edit that out, which is just what
I meant to say was there is no bad Billy
Joel song.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
That was perfect. There you go. We'll just clip that
out and put it over what you said originally.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
No, I'm going to leave it in. I'm gonna stand
by it. Hey, listen, there's a big hit Billy. If
you're listening. I love almost everything you ever did, but
you can't win them all.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
That's a great lesson to learn. Billy Joel really is.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Okay. So one thing we should point out, getting back
on track here, about this trial and the prosecution, which
hated communist. The jury of twelve had one black man,
one white woman, and no Jewish members on the jury.
The other were ten white Christian men who all were
(33:50):
in favor of the death penalty.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
Yeah, which you know in their defense, like you can't
be on a capital jury if you are in favor
of the death penalty, but still it was not the
kind of position that you would want to find yourself in,
like this is.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I never thought about that. I guess that's true.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Huh, yeah, I think we talked about it in the
jury episode. I'm pretty sure that's that's where I got
it from, which means it could be wrong.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
But yeah, well, if you were against a death built,
you just come up the works. They don't want you
in there.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so they're in a pickle, I guess
is what you want to call it. And they're still like,
this is all wrong. We're just we're maintaining our innocence.
And the prosecution said, oh yeah, we'll sit there while
we trot out a bunch of witnesses against you. Guys.
They brought Max Elector, who was a classmate with Morton,
(34:37):
Sobel and Julius. Remember Ruth's brother in law, lewis Abel
and I guess that was from I guess she had
a sister. I didn't see that anywhere. George Bernhardt, who
was Julius's doctor, Harry Gold, the courier for the Soviets,
and Elizabeth Bentley, who was also a former spy, and
(34:59):
each one had quite a story to tell.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, And if you're wondering, like why did they get
Julius's doctor in there, it's because he testified that Julius
had inquired about going to Mexico and like, what inoculations
do I need to get if I go to Mexico,
like very suddenly? And the prosecution was like, hey, and
I just made up for the very suddenly part, But
the prosecution basically took it that way and was like, hey,
this is evidence he was gonna flee, he was going
(35:22):
to go to Mexico. Get that doctor in here.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Right, So let's see Elizabeth Bentley, the former spy. She
said I saw him or somebody who looked like him
once talking to Jacob Golos, who was a known Soviet
operative and the head of the Communist Party of the
USA in Knickerbocker Village. The KBV no less in nineteen
forty two. It's a little thin. Some of the other
(35:45):
ones were a little more damning too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
By the way, I know, I sounded very dumb earlier
when you said KBV right after Knickerbocker Village, and I
didn't pick up on that. In my defense. I thought
it would have been kV because knickerbucker is one word.
That's what can be.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yes, but people like to like.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
No, I agree, I'd like three eating everyone. No, I'm
not a not a one hundred percent more on. I'm
just fifty percent more.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
No one thinks you're a moro on or even a
more on.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You should read the internet.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Uh, people, there's plenty of people who don't like me either.
Oh no, people take it personally. They're people that hate us.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
No, I don't. I don't read that stuff.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Good Again, they can soak their heads.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
That's just that's right, kick sand, touch grass, all those things.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
So like so, like I said, touch grass, you haven't
heard that. No? Is that like you they've been knocked down?
Speaker 1 (36:38):
No, I think touch grass is a more modern thing.
Like when people are just social media fighting, someone will
say touch grass, like, you know, get off the computer.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Go outside. Yes, yes, yeah, okay, I think that's what Weirdly,
I came across that for the first time within the
last couple of weeks, and I promptly forgot it.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, well you know what they should say, smoke grass,
Quit internet fighting, go smoke some weed.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
So what about Max Elektor.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Uh who was that? Oh he was the former roommate
I think. And he came out in testimony against him too.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Right, Yeah, he said Julius tried to recruit me as
a spy.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
Yeah, that's right, not good.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Lewis Abel, Ruth's brother in law, said, hey, I got
some money from Ruth and David, And if you know David,
that is weird. So I asked him where they got it,
and he said Julius gave it to them, and I
suspect for spying, and and Manny Block stood up as
aid objection, and the judge said, overruled. You call me,
(37:35):
you call me lover.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
Yeah, his dad's over there rolling some biscuits out.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Oh. I'm glad you said that, because I have to
get this out there. I don't know where it came from,
but it will not leave my head. Sir, mix a
lot buttermilk biscuits song. It's just I don't know that song.
Parts of it are you don't.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
No and I love Sir mexical, I just don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
It's a weird like novelty song that he had like
very early on surely like.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
The rest of his serious work exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
It's even more novel than his later stuff.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Yeah, oh man Seattle's own what a legend.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I didn't know he's from Seattle. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah, because when they did the do you remember the
Judgment Night movie and that amazing soundtrack.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
I remember the movie.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well, the movie wasn't great, but the soundtrack was great
because they paired rock bands with the hip hop artists
because that was a big thing. Oh yeah, and Sir
Mix a Lot and mud Honey repaired because they were
seattleites and their song was awesome.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Nice remember body Count with Iced Tea?
Speaker 1 (38:35):
Oh yeah, I saw them at the first Lollapalooza.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
That was when Iced Tea was still making music. And
was it like he's on that He's on that cop
show forever now right?
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah? I mean this is a rapper who had a
song called cop Killer. Yeah, and he plays a cop,
and apparently he's gone through some like metamorphosis in the
eyes of police and people who support police. I bet
from hating him to being like, hey, he's actually kind
of a good guy because he plays a cop on TV.
(39:04):
So well, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (39:07):
No, I remember the time, boy, he was persona non
grata for law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
For sure, and Icy didn't care. He's like, just watch,
I'll be back in the most surprising way you can
possibly imagine.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
As literal iced tea.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
He's like, well, not that surprising.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Right, the second most surprising thing? You mean you play
a cop on a TV show?
Speaker 2 (39:26):
He said, yep, bingo, that's what he was naring to say. Bingo.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Oh man, we're getting really sidetracked. This is a fun one.
Who knew the Rosenbergs are going to bring this out?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I did not know.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
So it was a three week trial in all, like
you said, they till the end said they were not guilty.
The trial concluded in March of nineteen fifty one guilty
all three defendants sentenced. The third guy, Morton Sobell, to
thirty years in prison, sentence the Rosenberg's to death, saying
their crime was worse than murder and that their work
(39:58):
caused the communist aggression in Korea, so they were really
taking the fall for a lot here. There were a
lot of appeals that were launched by Manny Block and company,
petitioning the Supreme Court delayed things by a couple of years.
All of those failed, but he did launch a pretty
successful media campaign that got a lot of people very
(40:21):
interested in the Rosenberg's sentence.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah, he finally got a newspaper to agree to look
into the case. It was the National Guardian, a very
left wing paper, and they investigated it and produced a
very sympathetic, what I take to be, long form article
on the Rosenberg's case, and that that article created a
bunch of other press which spread further and further, really
(40:46):
drummed up public sympathy to the point where they were
holding vigils where a thousand people would show up in
cities around the world in support of them, and people
thought like, this is this is not right. Pablo Picasso,
Albert Einstein, the Pope, they all said like these people
should not be executed, certainly not Ethel should be executed.
(41:10):
And the judges like, I don't, I can't hear you.
He had his fingers in his ears, like la la la.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, and their historians to say like this all just
sort of organically came about because of this press. The DOJ,
of course, was like no, no, no. The Communist Party
of the United States and the Communist Party overall launched
a propaganda campaign on behalf of the Rosenbergs. So you know,
it's a bit of a he said, she said, or
they said they said in this case. But here's the
(41:39):
deal on the execution. You said it was a game
of chicken early on, and I'm sure people that noticed
that that mentioned were like, what is Josh talking about
a game of chicken? And this is what you were
talking about. Was the idea was even Herbert Hoover did
not want to execute them, and it was all a
ploy to try up until the last moment. And there
(42:00):
were supposedly people on the on the walk to the
electric traier that were like, don't want to change your mind,
because you don't have to die right now. If you
want to give up some names.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Yeah, yeah, So the execution was essentially leveraged, just like
they used Ethel. They railroaded Ethyl into a conviction to
use his leverage against Julius to get him to flip
on other spies. They used the death sentence in the
exact same way. And they expected one or both of
them to be like, Okay, yeah, okay, that's fine, it's
(42:28):
not we got two young kids at home. Let's all
just cool off. We'll give you some names and some information.
And Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg did not do that.
And in fact, there was the head I think he
was a deputy Attorney general at the time, who said
Ethel Rosenberg called our bluff. So rather than one party
(42:49):
the DOJ or the Rosenbergs veering off at the last second,
they crashed head on and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg
were put to death, even though essentially no one thought
that was the right thing to do. And that's how
they went down.
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, And I mean didn't you find too that Hoover
even himself got in touch with a judge and was like, hey, listen,
we don't want you to install the death penalty here,
and the judge was had his fingers in his ear.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yeah, the FBI took an official stance that that Ethel
in particular should not be executed. That was the official
stance of the FBI, and it still happened anyway.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
It wasn't a good look. I mean, they were worried
about the optics for sure, of especially because they were
Jewish and you know, coming off the heels of World
War two and they're like, they got two young kids.
You cannot execute this woman.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, and even more so Manny Block, Remember he was
like an appeal machine. He had one last Hail Mary.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Appeal that that was on the billboard on the highway.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yeah, exactly, with somebody holding a check for a million
dollars that he got for them for their bakery. So
he filed one last appeal and he basically said, dude,
you're going to execute two Jewish people at the beginning
of the Sabbath. Do you know how bad that's going
(44:12):
to upset the Jewish community worldwide? And Judge Kaufman, who
was Jewish himself, said, you know, I hadn't really thought
of that, And Manny Block's like, great, so let's postpone
this indefinitely, And Judge Coffin said no, no, we're just
going to move it three hours earlier before the Sabbath starts.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Yeah. They were put to death at eight pm, and
that judge was a real sob. They had a funeral
in Brooklyn in June twenty first, nineteen fifty three, where
ten thousand people reportedly attended. They were buried finally accepted
after some closer cemetery said no, at the Wellwood Jewish
Cemetery in Long Island, and the boys it's just still
(44:52):
hard to believe they didn't know that one of them, didn't,
you know, for the sake of being a parent to
their kids, didn't recant, But they didn't, And those boys,
Robert and Michael, were adopted by Anne and Abel mirror Pole.
Little interesting side note here. Abel wrote the song Strange Fruit.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Which have you ever heard the Susie and the Banshees
version of that?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Oh no, but that's great.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, it's really good. That's how I first heard that song.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Another reference to the first Lallapalooza. Even who knew?
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Wow, that's really something.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Wow, I know, right, did not expect that. Billy Joel
is spinning in his piano stool right now.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
He's like, I know, I should have accepted that offer.
I know.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Michael got a PhD In economics, and Robert Rosenberg became
an attorney.
Speaker 2 (45:40):
And both of them, they've dedicated their lives of trying
to clear their parents' names. Finally, after years and years
and years, they admitted, like, Okay, dad was a spy,
but not mom. Yeah, and you said that. They were
criticized by some people for basically choosing loyalty to Joseph
Stalin over their two children and leaving them behind, and
David Green Glass again who lied to and got his
(46:03):
sister and brother in law killed. I said they were stupid.
He said, that was a really stupid thing for them
to do, to not accept some sort of bargain to
take the death penalty off the table. That's his opinion
on the whole thing. Wow, that's what I said too. Yeah,
and oh, I should say real quick, the reason that
(46:24):
the brothers the sons finally were like, okay, Dad was
a spy was because those Venona tables we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, they were.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
Finally released starting in the nineties, and it showed quite
clearly that Julius was a very enthusiastic spy for the
Soviet Union and probably Ethel definitely knew about it. But
she may have been involved in recruiting Ruth, and if
she did that, she was definitely a spy. But again,
that doesn't change most people's thoughts that they probably should
(46:55):
not have been executed.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
Yeah, yeah, totally, because I mean that's a whole differferent argument.
You know, it's like, maybe they were guilty, but you
should not have put them to death. That's what a
lot of people seem to think.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
Yeah, I mean, including people from their own spiring didn't
even come close to the death sentence. It was just
specifically leverage that just never got taken away because the
government wasn't about to be like, okay, you got us,
all right, we won't kill you.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, yeah, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
Boy. Yeah, this is a fun win. And there was
a lot of jokes. I hope it didn't come across
as insensitive. I mean that's kind of what we do here,
so not be insensitive. Try to you know, kind of
make jokes about stuff.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Yeah, if you can't laugh about everything, then what can
you laugh at?
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Nothing?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Exactly? Actually I don't know if that's exactly true, but
still yeah, since Chuck said exactly.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
That's not to examine that way exactly.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
It's listener mail time.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
That's right. This is about we heard from a lot
of our Canadian friends. We love it when Canada points
out something that they know that we don't, and in
this case, it's about Cole's Notes. A great episode about
the Cliffs Notes guys. The name rings of Bell to
me probably through American movies and TV, but as a
millennial Canadian, I'm far more familiar with Cole's Notes. Cole
(48:16):
was a legendary bookstore across Canada, and so every location
had a stand of Cole's Notes booklets focused on books
and plays covered in the Canadian school curriculum. I even
remember reading them in school alongside Shakespeare plays to understand
the better. Yes, they were often used to cram before
a test without reading the material. They're also used as
coal intended chapters. Slash Indigo is the big Canadian book
(48:38):
read tailor now and they bought out the Cole's locations,
but they still print and sell Cole's Notes today, so
that guy did alright in the Canadian market. Thanks for
making me a little smarter each week. And that is
from Natalie gud orm Son Catormson, great name from Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Thanks a lot, Natalie, Thanks for making us a little
smarter this week. We appreciate it big time. Yeah. And
if you want to be like Natalie and tell us
something we didn't know. We love that kind of thing.
You can send it off to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio
dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Should Know News
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Josh Clark
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