The Rosenbergs: Cold War Spies and a Contested Execution

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. Even Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Pope Pius XII pleaded for their lives.This episode draws on declassified Venona cables, KGB archives, and once-sealed testimony to separate Julius's real spying from the fabricated evidence used to send Ethel to the electric chair.Julius recruiting engineers and passing radar and jet secretsDavid Greenglass's Los Alamos sketches and the atomic chargeUsing Ethel as a lever to pressure Julius into confessingThe eleventh-hour typewriter story Greenglass later recantedWhat Venona and KGB files revealed about Ethel's limited role