Re: The Rosenberg Boys in The Atlantic

On Fri, Aug 14, 2026 at 10:41 AM, Michael Schreiber wrote:

> 
> I found the Atlantic article to be quite moving in telling the story of
> the Rosenberg family, but the ending section, with its insistence on
> pursuing the question of "why didn't Ethel tell the truth," was hard to
> take. It seems to be based on the assumption that the U.S. government had
> the right to punish Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Good point and I agree.

Julius also shouldn't have received the death penalty since he was not solely or even primarily responsible for giving the Soviets the "secret" of the A-bomb, the justification for his murder by US propagandists. As we know, the Soviets developed it independently from multiple sources, including their own research scientists.

Even had Julius given them the magic formula, from the perspective of those who defended the existence of the Soviet Union, this would have been a good thing. Without a nuclear deterrent, the Soviets and its allies would have been at the mercy of US imperialism in the immediate aftermath of WW II.  I'm not an admirer of either regime, but the Iranians are today probably looking ruefully at North Korea's nuclear stockpile and wishing they had gone the same route.


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