1950 Press Photo Ethel Rosenberg custody FBI atom bomb secrets Russia leaking

  A new narrative of the famed case that finally solves its remaining mysteries, by the author of the bestselling Invitation to an InquestWalter and Miriam Schneir’s 1965 bestseller Invitation to an Inquest was among the first critical accounts of the controversial case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, famously executed in 1953 for passing atom bomb secrets to Soviet Russia. In Invitation the Schneirs presented exhaustive and damning evidence that key witnesses in the trial had changed their stories after coaching from prosecutors, and that the FBI had forged evidence.  The conclusion was unavoidable: The Rosenbergs were innocent.   But were they?   Thirty years after the publication of Inquest, Walter Schneir was back on the case after bits and pieces of new evidence started coming to light, much of it connecting Julius Rosenberg to Soviet espionage. Over more than a decade, Schneir continued his search for the truth, meeting with former intelligence officials in Moscow and Prague, and cross checking details recorded in thousands of government documents.   The result is an entirely new narrative of the Rosenberg case. The reality, Schneir demonstrates, is that Rosenbergs ended up hopelessly trapped: prosecuted for atomic espionage they didn’t commit—but unable to admit earlier espionage activities during World War II.   As it happened, Julius Rosenberg was only marginally involved in the atomic spy ring he was depicted as leading—while Ethel, critically, was not at all involved. The two lied when the contended they knew nothing about espionage. Ethel knew about it and Julius had practiced it, but the government’s contention that they had stolen the “secret” of the atom bomb was critically and fatally flawed. 

  A new narrative of the famed case that finally solves its remaining mysteries, by the author of the bestselling Invitation to an InquestWalter and Miriam Schneir’s 1965 bestseller Invitation to an Inquest was among the first critical accounts of the controversial case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, famously executed in 1953 for passing atom bomb secrets to Soviet Russia. In Invitation the Schneirs presented exhaustive and damning evidence that key witnesses in the trial had changed their stories after coaching from prosecutors, and that the FBI had forged evidence.  The conclusion was unavoidable: The Rosenbergs were innocent.   But were they?   Thirty years after the publication of Inquest, Walter Schneir was back on the case after bits and pieces of new evidence started coming to light, much of it connecting Julius Rosenberg to Soviet espionage. Over more than a decade, Schneir continued his search for the truth, meeting with former intelligence officials in Moscow and Prague, and cross checking details recorded in thousands of government documents.   The result is an entirely new narrative of the Rosenberg case. The reality, Schneir demonstrates, is that Rosenbergs ended up hopelessly trapped: prosecuted for atomic espionage they didn’t commit—but unable to admit earlier espionage activities during World War II.   As it happened, Julius Rosenberg was only marginally involved in the atomic spy ring he was depicted as leading—while Ethel, critically, was not at all involved. The two lied when the contended they knew nothing about espionage. Ethel knew about it and Julius had practiced it, but the government’s contention that they had stolen the “secret” of the atom bomb was critically and fatally flawed. 

The Atom Bomb was crucial to a post-War world dominated by the Cold War. Yet the stories of the people who chose to give atom secrets to Russia has never fully been told. Paul Broda's father and stepfather both passed secrets to the Russians, for no personal gain. Here he gives his personal account of his family and their actions. Scientist Spies is a compelling account of three lives swept up in the great events of Communism, Fascism, World War II, and the creation of the Atom Bomb. Paul Broda's father Engelbert Broda (Berti) was an Austrian who was imprisoned as a Communist in Berlin in 1933 and then twice in Austria, twice escaped arrest, and was secretly in Russia in 1936. He came to England and from 1942 worked on the Atom Project. The author's mother, Hilde, met Berti in Berlin and joined him in London in 1938. In 2009 it emerged from Russian archives that Berti had spied for the Russians, as MI5 had long suspected. Alan Nunn May, who was to become Paul Broda's stepfather, was a physicist who trained at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge under Rutherford and Chadwick. He also joined the Atom Project in 1942 and he gave atomic secrets to the Russians during the War. Alan was convicted under the Official Secrets Act in 1946, and served nearly seven years in prison. Hilde met Alan after his release and they married in 1953. The espionage by both Berti and Alan affected subsequent history to the extent that each separately has been said to have 'started the Cold War'. Here, for the first time, Paul Broda describes the origins of his 'three parents', all born in 1910-11, what shaped their attitudes towards Communism and Fascism and why they gave secrets. Using family sources, such as letters and Alan's own accounts, Paul Broda has been able to combine their stories with much material that was released by MI5 in 2006-07, and what he himself saw. In this unique and very personal memoir, he presents his own view of his parents as principled and committed individuals who believed that they were making the world a safer place, but invites readers to form their own views.

This is a book about women's history and biography and to radical history, particularly to our understanding of family and gender relations and female self-understanding of women radicals.

Pages: 64, Edition: 1, Library Binding, Rosen Publishing Group

When the American Bar Association recreated the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg on the fortieth anniversary of their execution, the jury acquitted the "mock Rosenbergs, " finding that in today's courts they would not have been convicted of espionage. The 1950s trial of the Rosenbergs on charges of "Atomic Spying" and "stealing the secrets of the Atomic bomb" was a major event of Cold War America, galvanizing public opinion on all sides of the question. Secret Agents presents essays by lawyers, cultural critics, social historians and historians of science, as well as a reconsideration of the Rosenbergs by their younger son, Robert Meeropol. Secret Agents gives new resonance to a history we have for too long been willing to forget.

In the history of Soviet espionage in America, few people figure more crucially than Harry Gold. A Russian Jewish immigrant who spied for the Soviets from 1935 until 1950, Gold was an accomplished industrial and military espionage agent. He was assigned to be physicist Klaus Fuchs’s “handler” and ultimately conveyed sheaves of stolen information about the Manhattan Project from Los Alamos to Russian agents. He is literally the man who gave the USSR the plans for the atom bomb. The subject of the most intensive public manhunt in the history of the FBI, Gold was arrested in May 1950. His confession revealed scores of contacts, and his testimony in the trial of the Rosenbergs proved pivotal. Yet among his co-workers, fellow prisoners at Lewisburg Penitentiary, and even those in the FBI, Gold earned respect, admiration, and affection.In The Invisible Harry Gold, journalist and historian Allen Hornblum paints a surprising portrait of this notorious yet unknown figure. Through interviews with many individuals who knew Gold and years of research into primary documents, Hornblum has produced a gripping account of how a fundamentally decent and well-intentioned man helped commit the greatest scientific theft of the twentieth century. (20101016)

For quite some time after the 1977 publication of The Public Burning, it was almost impossible to find a copy. The book's own publisher seemed--no, was reluctant to admit it even existed. That's because this imaginative reconstruction of the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted for giving atom bomb secrets to the Soviets, was the first major work of modern fiction to feature a still-living historical figure as a prominent character. The book's obscurity was the publisher's attempt to avoid legal repercussions from Richard Nixon, who over the course of the book engages in a romantic interlude with Ethel Rosenberg and graphically surrenders himself to a rapacious Uncle Sam. Now that Nixon's dead, however, readers are free to marvel at one of the few American novels to rival Joyce's Ulysses for sustained stylistic inventiveness. Snippets of speeches and articles from Time are recast in poetic form, entire scenes are presented in dramatic verse, as events in the Rosenberg case move towards their historically destined conclusion. --Ron Hogan

What could it have been like to press the switch that dropped the world's first atomic bomb? What might have been going through the head of the All-American young man who had that responsibility on the Enola Gay? Complete with interviews with people like Colonel Paul Tibbets and those who knew Curtis LeMay and Tokyo Rose, this re-creation tells of the entire six hours that the mission took, from take-off at Tinian to that awesome moment over Hiroshima. From an interview with Dr. Theodore McCluskey S.J.: "I try to imagine being in his front seat position. Can you imagine putting anyone into that position? Making any human being responsible for that? Such power over death and life? No wonder he was mixed up. No wonder he wanted to think up a plan B, or, how did he put it?-to try to reshuffle the cards. I can understand why you and he would want to imagine things differently. Imagination is needed if we are going to see other possibilities in time of war."

In the history of Soviet espionage in America, few people figure more crucially than Harry Gold. A Russian Jewish immigrant who spied for the Soviets from 1935 until 1950, Gold was an accomplished industrial and military espionage agent. He was assigned to be physicist Klaus Fuchs' 'handler' and ultimately conveyed sheaves of stolen information about the Manhattan Project from Los Alamos to Russian agents. He is literally the man who gave the USSR the plans for the atom bomb. The subject of the most intensive public manhunt in the history of the FBI, Gold was arrested in May 1950. Gold's confession revealed scores of contacts, and his testimony in the trial of the Rosenbergs proved pivotal. Yet among his co-workers, fellow prisoners at Lewisburg Penitentiary, and even those in the FBI, Gold earned respect, admiration, and affection. In "The Invisible Harry Gold", journalist and historian Allen Hornblum paints a surprising portrait of this notorious yet unknown figure. Through interviews with many individuals who knew Gold and years of research into primary documents, Hornblum has produced a gripping account of how a fundamentally decent and well-intentioned man helped commit the greatest scientific theft of the twentieth century.