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The Rosenbergs: The Rosenberg Trial

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The rosenbergs were the first and some of the only U.S. civilians to suffer the death penalty in an espionage trial. Before the trial the rosenbergs lived like the average american family with their two sons in a uneventful suburb. Though the husband Julius has the most peculiar job, he is supposedly a Soviet spy. Thesis

The Rosenberg case was a very long case blah blah
General info bout the case –a murder committed by the U.S. government in the name of national security and the Cold War fight against communism. The official crime for which they were tried was conspiracy to commit espionage. In particular–though this was not part of the formal indictment–they were accused of passing "atomic secrets" to the Soviet Union. But as the case …show more content…

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) interviewed thousands of individuals, calling on them to turn in their neighbors, coworkers, friends or family members whom they suspected to be communists. Probably the best remembered are the Hollywood writers and actors who were called before HUAC, but thousands of ordinary people–civil rights activists, trade unionists, people who had signed a peace petition or contributed to the anti-fascist cause–lost their jobs and were blacklisted or jailed as a result of the witch-hunt. . . .
The notion that the Rosenbergs, two ordinary people from New York City, could lead a spy ring and steal the secret to the atomic bomb fed the fears being whipped up by McCarthy and his witch-hunters. A wife, a mother, a husband, a father–anyone could be a Russian spy. In many ways, the Rosenbergs were very ordinary people. Like many people who came of age during the grinding poverty of the Great Depression, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were radicalized and joined the struggles of the time. Both were the children of Jewish immigrant families living on New York’s poor Lower East Side. . .

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