Doomed to Fail - Ep 8 - Part 2: Spies Like Us - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

We are diving back into history with a re-release of our 8th episode as we unravel the intricate tale of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.Join us in revisiting this captivating story that delves into espionage, controversy, and the enduring questions surrounding justice in the midst of the Cold War.#ColdWarHistory #RosenbergsLegacy #PodcastRewindInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi friends, Taylor from Doom to Failed. This week we are doing three re-releases in a row because we're taking a little break. We're tired. This one is the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. If you saw the movie Oppenheimer, I didn't, I forgot, but I will probably eventually. I think they're mentioned or they may not be, but either way, Ethel's brother did work on the Manhattan Project and shared some information with them. And it's still, I think, a little bit up in the air, whether or not what they did, actually legitimately spying, but it sounds like they did it and they were executed in the United States on the same day. And it is a big deal to have a married couple. There's a lot of, you know, communist sympathizing and post-World War II, just stuff that, you know, we all kind of went through. I mean, I didn't because I wasn't there, but like, you know, we're recuperating from it probably forever here in America. Anyway, enjoy this episode. episode. If you have any questions or any thoughts, we're at doomed tofillpod at gmail.com and at doom to fill pod and all the socials. I hope you enjoy every releases this week.

The matter of the people of the state of California versus Horanthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. I don't think you do. That's what you're saying. So what do you have for us today, Taylor? Okay, well, I mentioned that our red between our two is being executed and for crimes. So we will talk about that. And I wanted to ask you a question, Fars, in the world right now, what are you afraid of? So I have three things that are part of this story that are sort of evergreen existential threats that people are afraid of.

I have a new one that I'm afraid of, but right now, is there anything, like, globally that you're afraid of? Globally that I'm afraid of. Global awfulness. What could ruin the whole world? I mean, okay, like, obviously, like a nuclear bomb going off. That's it. That's the correct answer. Okay.

Well, there you go. So today we're talking about three things that you should be afraid of. One is communism, but not really because communism is just a red herring for other things. Two is nuclear war, which I am very scared of, and three is electric chairs. So, like, you're not probably going to die in an electric chair, but we'll talk about it and how awful it is. Those are three things that are scary. I'm also currently afraid of AI, just in general. I'm kind of afraid of everything, so just wanted to put that out there.

So, Taylor, do you think that if we were to go to war, that they would use, like, the other country would use nukes on Joshua Tree? I don't. Well, okay, I'll, we'll talk about. that a second i don't think i'm far i'm i think i'm close enough that yes i think i'm fucked but i'll talk about that in a second okay so today we're going to talk about julius and ethel rosenberg who are two american citizens who were killed in the electric chair for selling nuclear secrets to the soviet union i don't know if selling is it the right word they gave them to the so some of our red flags for this couple they seem like a pretty normal couple

like they you know loved each other they had two kids um they were pretty like you know innocent-looking, innocent seeming. But the red flags are, you know, they're communists, card-carrying communists in America in the 40s and 50s, which is not like a great thing to be because it is McCarthyism. People are mad at communists. And they went further than just, you know, attending rallies and wanting like a more socialist equal society

like a lot of young communists did because the actual red flag is they were spies. So being a spy is not good for your family, especially in this case. Some of the sources that I use, I listen to a podcast called Civics 101 about espionage and the Rosenbergs. I watched half of a documentary that their granddaughter made. She made it in the early 2000s called Air to an Execution. And I only watched half of it because she was very much like, they're innocent. I can't believe all this happened and like they're not innocent.

Like I know that like nobody wants their grandparents to be Soviet spies, but they were. It's a way cooler story than they're innocent. innocent like i would yeah it's like it has no impact on you to in today's like it's over i mean yeah i think it's kind of it's kind of cool rather than being like let's exonerate them being like yeah they were spies they did all this cool spy shit it was bad but yes and then also watch an american justice show on the rosenbergs and then wikipedia and chat gbt for some filler so that's those are my sources but let's talk about who they were so julius and ethel um they were you know a couple New York City. Julius was born on May 12th in 1918. His parents were Jewish immigrants from

Russia pre-World War I. And they ended up living on the Lower East Side, which is an awesome neighborhood where I lived as well. It definitely has ups and downs. So this is like a downtime for New York City. It's, you know, depression time. It's not great. But Julius went to City College of New York. He had got a degree in electrical engineering. And he began to get involved into left-wing politics while he was in college and mostly like labor activism protests against the rise of fascism so all stuff that we're seeing over seeing now you know um people try to unionize and not be fascist so similar times repeating itself um ethel was born ethel greenglass in 15 she was also interested in the arts she wanted to be an opera singer by all accounts she was

really good at it wanted to be like an actor or a singer but ended up um being a secretary and she started to get interested in labor relations and she met julius when she joined the young communists league where he was a leader in like so is this not the point in time when it's dangerous to join the communists yeah so they knew they were doing they were agitators yeah yes yes so we're coming up to the time when you know senator mccarthy is doing the like the the the red scare on like a federal level and this is like in New York City, so they don't cross paths with him, but he definitely, you know, tainted the water for being a communist being like a bad thing. And there's like some, some stock

footage, I think, in the documentary that I watched where, you know, there's like a communist parade and they're like, join the communist party and people are like jeering at them. So it's like a thing. It's also, wait, actually, this is actually kind of what I'm going to come up next is so Julius and Ethel were married in 1939. She was 24. He was 24. He was. was 21 and it was a hard depression time crazy poverty you see people on breadlines like nobody has a job so there's a lot of radicalizing for a lot of people and communism was attractive because it has the ideas of like an ideal society where everybody you know shares what they have so there's no more starving people on the street wait yeah can i sidetrack you real quick of course

what do you think about communism i think it's a good idea But I don't think, I think you shouldn't have someone in charge who takes all the money, which is like what we're doing now with capitalism. But I do think that you should take care of each other. So I think, I mean, I feel like I would say more like democratic socialism. It makes more sense in practice. But I like the idea of not letting people starve and not having billionaires. Okay.

What do you think? I think that it's a great concept if you completely negate human, decision-making and will and desire out of the equations. Yeah, because I was going to be someone who wants more or whatever. I do too. I don't want to, you know, yeah, but I do like the idea of not letting people starve. If we were, if we were better, it would be a great concept. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

People can't handle it. I think it's a good, a good thing to say. Yeah. And so actually I have a quote from Jay Edgar Hoover about communism. And he said communism is. in reality is not a political party. It is a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life. It reveals a condition akin to disease that spreads like an epidemic.

And like an epidemic, a quarantine is necessary to keep it from infecting this nation. So, which made me laugh also because quarantine is a good metaphor when it's on your side. But then they also like people don't want to quarantine when it was actually an epidemic. So that made me laugh a little bit. So they're in this place where they're idealizing young communists. dreaming of a socialist country, and they believed that the Soviet Union was the answer to this problem. So they really are like, they think it's perfect over there, and either they don't know or they don't see the bad things. So either they, like, didn't see all of the starving,

like millions of people starved to death during the war, or they didn't see all the poverty and the things that are happening under, under communism over there. So they just really think it's, it's perfect. And, you know, in theory, I wrote, you know, in theory it makes sense, but it doesn't work because people are awful, what we just talked about. So they get married at the beginning of World War II, and almost right away, you know, the crime part of their story starts. So their case became a symbol for fear and paranoia

around the Cold War, around communism. And, you know, people, many of their supporters said that the Rosenbergs were kind of set up for political witch hunt. it's been kind of a controversial case, you know, since, since it happened, and we'll talk about exactly what that means. But there are, you know, despite all of the ongoing debate, I'll just say this now. So, like, there's some stuff that was released in the mid-2000s. So despite all the back and forth since their case for like 50 years or so, the stuff that's released pretty much proves that they did do it.

They were Soviet spies. Julius, he definitely was involved in passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. And it confirmed that he had a central role in this espionage. So they definitely did the thing that they were accused of. And then the question is like, what about the zeitgeist around their story? You need to get into how they had access this material, right? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. So here's what were they accused of doing and how did they do it? So it involves like their whole lives, all the people that they know. And they were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. and passing atomic secrets. They're part of aspiring that included Americans and some Soviet citizens who shared military secrets of nuclear weapons. During World War II, Julius worked in the Army of Signal Corps Laboratory in New Jersey

where he had access to classified documents. So that's where he kind of gets it from. And she ended up being a secretary there as well. And so one of her big things is typing up all these notes and typing up and copying everything. it's sent to the Soviet Union. Immediately, he starts passing information to the Soviet Union

via his wife and other members of the spiring. And now World War II is over, and it's the Cold War. So the Cold War lasted from 1945. Do you know when the Cold War ended? If I had a guess, it had to be

like the 70, or no, 80, it was in Reagan era, so like 84. were. It was 91. Oh, wow. Yeah, which feels late. That, like, that feels late for me because I was like alive during the Cold War. I feel like I've seen something that was a lot, such a long time ago, but just like a little bit of time line. So World War I was the end of the Russian Empire. And then towards the end of World War one, there was a Russian Civil War that went from 1917 to 1922. And then 1922, it became the Soviet Union, which was the USSR. And then after it dissolved in 1991 it became 15 separate countries and that's where we still have russia now so there's more to

that but that's kind of what we're looking at um and far as what do you know about the cold war like what do you feel like when i say cold war i feel like it was an incredibly tense time that required a lot of people to like have cool heads and yeah um i've seen a so my one of my favorite movies my favorite like historical movies that's kind of stupid to say that way is 13 days which has Kevin Koster in it so you know it's going to be good but it's about it's about the 13 days of the Cuban missile crisis and how so many pieces were moving and so many people had to just not respond in anger or irrationally and it's kind of a miracle we're not we didn't self-destruct at that time oh totally totally yeah things I know like the Bay of Pigs so

nuclear weapons being real close to America, Sputnik, so people were kind of freaking out because the Russians were the first to put a satellite into space, and people went outside. It thought they could see it. They were just like, you know, it was the first one. It was really scary. It was a race to the moon. There was all this stuff in Cuba. So yeah, exactly. A lot of fear about nuclear war, a lot of like hiding under desks and like at school and trying to figure like what happened if it happened. So I also feel this is what I'm saying about living in Joshua So I feel like very scared of nuclear war right now, maybe irrationally, but also maybe rationally. And sometimes, I live next to a military base.

So one of like the biggest military bases in the country is like next door. So all the time I hear bombs going off. So it'll shake my house. And sometimes at night they'll do like a ton of military training and there'll be tons of bombs in a row and it'll be really loud and shaky and I can hear it. So it definitely like makes it a target. And then also because I'm kind of crazy and over and a little bit of paranoid, like whenever the internet goes out or like the power goes out, I'm like, this is it. And I look to the to the northwest and I look for the for the cloud over L.A. Because I'm like, this is it.

I'll see the cloud from my house. I probably would see the cloud from my house. I would definitely see the flash when L.A. gets nuked. So. Yeah, you've really, you've really done the math on this. I did. I mean, I said it last night, but I already think about it anyway. So it's very tense, and I feel tense right now thinking about it, and it's like mostly just me.

It's not like everywhere over the media like it was during the Cold War. People were like really, really afraid of this. So you think you're in New York. It's a very, very tense time. It's a Cold War. Things are scary. The World War II just ended, but it didn't like end everything. And so Julius and Ethel during this time, they're just living their lives.

They have two sons. If you saw them, like out on the town, you wouldn't think twice about them. And a lot of it is still speculation and what they did. But again, like I said, they did it. They were spies. I watched in the dock with a granddaughter, you know, where she was like, I wish that they could be exonerated, but they're not. So Julius becomes involved in the Communist Party. It's believed that in 1942, so they've been married for a couple of years, is when he made contact with Soviet intelligence agents and started to pass

Some of the things that he is accused of doing, sharing secrets with spies. And one cool thing that they did is they would be like, okay, you have to meet your, like, the spy Fars, you know, in this place. So they would take a jello box and cut it in half in like a weird way. And then you would take half of it. And then they would give the other half to the person you're supposed to meet. And you would know it was them when your jello boxes matched up. So you got to just keep going up to people with jello boxes and like, and like tap the yellow box and see yes yes that seems a little bit suspicious but that's how you know you're talking to the right person like the right the right person on the other end he shared thousands of documents about jet fighters missiles like all those things so during this time like right after world two especially we were still and during world war two we were still allies with the soviet union but we weren't sharing secrets so like during world war two you know we were you know we were friends but um also like after we

World War two ends, then the Soviet Union stops being an ally. And as a child of the 80s, you know, which is the Cold War, apparently, I just learned now. I always pictured, you know, Stalin and the Russians as the bad guys. And so I was surprised when, you know, to see the pictures of him and FDR and Churchill together, you know. I think this was one of those, the enemy of my enemy. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't think that they actually wanted to be on friendly terms. I think it was like we got to defeat germany so let's just get it together yes um there are some fun stories of like churchill and fdr going to russia to or like the ussr to meet with stalin and when they uh get there solon's like come and stay in our nicest castle and it was like awful and churchill's

like freezing and like in his underwear trying to find like vodka you know just like that that sounds delightful that'd be fun that sounds like it could be a little movie comedy Yes. Yes. I think that, I mean, for better or worse, I do, would like a comedy of Churchill just like running around in his underwear because he did that a lot. I think that could be delightful to watch. So now, so now, like when he starts actually passing this stuff, we're actually in the Cold War with the Russians. So they're definitely like the enemies at this point. And another big part of the story is that Ethel's brother was actually working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. So he was like, in. it with like the the creation of the nuclear bombs so in 1947 the FBI begins investigating them and other card carrying communists for suspected espionage they were arrested in 1950 and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage david greenglass who's brother who worked at the manhattan project is arrested first and then just rats out everybody and david greenglass lives for a long time. He dies in like 2004. So he definitely like sold out his fellow spies so that he would get a

lighter sentence. And in 1951, the Rosenbergs are tried and found guilty of espionage. So when they go through their things and find all the things that they that they shared with the Soviets, they do find a cross section of the fat man bomb, which is a bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. And then also in the documentary of the granddaughter, she's like, she sees that picture of the National Archives. And she's like, oh my gosh. Like, there's no way that the Soviets could have made a thing from this is one little picture. You know, you're like, no, I feel like any nuclear secrets sharing is bad. Yeah, there's not a gray line.

Yeah, there's no, there's no, like, oh, this is, this isn't seen like a big deal. Like, no, it's a big deal that they even have that connection at all. Yeah. Like, it's a big deal. So they're sent it to death. And it's a big cultural moment because actually the Rosenbergs are the only people to be executed for espionage during technically peace time. and so it was like it was a cold war but it wasn't like an actual like during the world war where people were executed like you know kind of a lot so it's a big cultural moment some people are really really mad at them for sharing these secrets and i'm mad too like i get it some people think they're innocent and some people is like how mad are we that we need martyrs is the punishment equal to the crime was there a crime did the brother them under the bus so it looks so nice so there's so many things that people are you know going back and forth a bomb and but you know they did it and they were guilty so it also comes up do you ever read the bell jar by sylvia

plas no so it's like a book about like a woman who's depressed it's very there's a lot more to it sure but she also thinks about the Rosenbergs a lot and so during in the beginning of the book she's like reading the paper and she sees that they've been they've been executed and it kind of brings up this feeling of isolation and it could happen to anyone so that is kind of like the cultural feeling is like well anyone could be convicted of being a spy it could be anyone it could be your neighbor you know kind of like making people more suspicious of each other as well i don't know you just look at your w too does it say lost alamos nuclear bunker on it like if it doesn't then you're probably not likely totally i was wondering Taylor is any like given the time period that we're in was there any

hints of like maybe anti-semitism played into the severity of their punishment you know what I didn't look that up, but possibly because it's definitely that also like another form of like being the other, you know. I was going to say, there's so many otherisms here. Like you're communist, that's otherism. You're Jewish, that's otherism. Like, totally. Yeah. You know, I, I would imagine probably, but I don't, but I don't, didn't like read that specifically.

But it's a good call out and a good question. So in 1953, they're executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. Do you know what happens when you're executed via the electric chair? So your heart stops. I'm not sure what the mechanics and physiology of that are, but I think that that's how you ultimately are killed. Yeah. Did you ever see or read the Green Mile?

Yes. So remember how he like doesn't do the sponge on the guy's head and then it's like catches on fire? So like a wet sponge needs to be involved. So the electric chair was first used in the United States and the. late 19th century. So it involves strapping a person into a chair, electrodes attached to their heads and legs and administering a powerful electric shock. So the wet sponge stops it from catching on fire, which is crazy. And so there's usually two shocks. When the first switch is flipped and electric current goes through your body, which causes the muscles to contract and then you

pass out. So it just shocks you and you pass out. And then the second switch, is the one that like kills all your organs like you said it kills your heart kills all your organs and then you die it can also you know sometimes people you'll get like severe burns and other injuries like while it's happening like it's not it's not a not it's a very cruel way to die and julius's went fine as far electric electric electric electric electrician goes but ethels did not so she actually had to be shocked four times before she died and people saw smoke coming out of her head. So it was pretty awful. The first jolt didn't render her unconscious. It took a couple more to end her life. They were not, the electrodes were not properly placed. So the electricity,

rather than going to her vital organs, went to her head. So it's an awful way to go. And so it was publicized that it was botched execution, which definitely made it, made the debate even stronger as to be like, why are we executing these people? Why are you even? doing capital punishment, all of that. So after their death was a big thing. And the questions are like, what did they share? Do we kill spies this publicly? I'm sure we do, but maybe it's not always in the news.

It seems so normal. Did they do it? So it's not all 100% and like it's not very clear everything they did do, which makes sense because you don't want to like put the spy secrets out. But it's just like these people were spies. So in around 2005, the National Archives, and records administration released a portion of the grand jury testimony. So it shed some new light on the case and gave us some more details. So it did confirm that Ethel knew what she was doing

when she typed up the documents. So when she typed up and copied the secrets that Julius was stealing from work and her brother was stealing from Los Alamos, she knew what she was doing. It confirmed that Julius was a big part of aspiring. Their code names were found in Soviet cables and the key witness was ethel's brother so he's the one that threw everybody under the bus and like told everybody and got them got them executed so that makes it all true and then some the questions that like i kind of want to end with is like so the red flags are like they were spies and they were sending secrets to the soviet union which was bad but they believed they were doing a good thing because they believed in this like utopian idea of like

socialism and communism and they thought that that was happening. So were they just like people who believed in a perfect society? Were they traitors? Were they scapegoats for, you know, this Cold War era thing? And in the end, I think you kind of believe what what you want to believe. I think they were kids when they started. They believed in a perfect society, but obviously crossed the line when they shared secrets. And a question that I had like late last night thinking about this is you know what is okay spying if you want a better world and you're spying for a better world like is that justifiable but once you open the door to nuclear secrets then I'm like then that's a hard no because I don't want anyone to know anything about nuclear secrets I don't

want anyone to do it at all I wish that there was never any nuclear anything so um that's where I think like for me I'm like okay well I don't know if the public execution essentially was you the right the right thing to do but also like they definitely did you know a bad thing um whether they knew they were doing it or not you know what i mean i yeah i um what i was thinking of was that in a lot of situations the um outcomes are very directly tied to the actions so for example like with lee boy bnalvo or with john mohammed getting executed it's like that was directly tied that you did a really really bad thing and who will die because of that in this case it's so far removed think of all the things that have to happen for the bad outcomes to actually be realized like you have to deal the material you have to copy it you have to translate it you have to send it you have to tie jello cups together yeah hand it off they have to go out and backwards engineer it develop it and then all of a sudden then the bad outcome could be realized but the outcome is so the gravitas of that outcome is so heavy that it kind of justifies the result yeah totally so

like exactly so the things that you're doing aren't you're not shooting someone from the back of a car you know like you're not like doing things like like that but you what you're doing is directly going to affect no matter how long it takes the possibility of like global annihilation yeah you know and like this and then that obviously like then we have this tense cold war for 40 years and we have today when there's like i just like hit my microphone they have today when there's like balloons and you know you know whatever all this stuff and means but it's pretty scary and i and i think the rosenbergs had like a direct um effect on on getting getting those secrets and getting that stuff over to to the to the Soviet Union so um it's a scary thing that they did and then whether or not they like realized the global implications i think that yeah you're right like they did a bad thing yeah i um so i for again i don't me and teller don't talk about what we research ahead of time like i had long ago looked on down the spy rabbit hole And I remember thinking this same thought about this guy named Robert Hanson.

I don't know if you've ever heard of him before, but he was an FBI intelligence analyst, and he did the same thing. He passed on, I don't know what, it was a long time ago. I don't remember what exactly he passed on, but I remember reading about his punishment. I was like, at first I was like, damn, that's heavy. He got, he was put in ADX supermax in Florence, which I don't know if you know much about that, but it's, a terrifying place it sounds like that's where the 9-11 people ended up that's where timothy mcvay tecazzynski um el chapo like it is you're a dead human walking yeah like it is the worst of the worst punishments and yeah the time i was like it's like that's so heavy

extreme yeah but then you look at like again the downstream impact of the decisions that guy made and it's like kind of makes sense Yeah, kind of makes sense. And, like, maybe he didn't even know that, imagine that that was going to be the outcome. Yeah, maybe. But, like, those little things and, like, they snowball into potentially being a really, really, really bad thing. Yeah. Yeah.

So hopefully this, this episode gets published tomorrow and we're not annihilated by nuclear war. But we'll see. It could be today. Which is why I'm sitting under my desk. How were they doomed to fail? I think because they started to, they started with this idealistic view of the world and being better, but they didn't have all the details. So maybe the doomed to fail is not knowing all the details because they thought that the Soviet Union was this perfect place when it wasn't, which we know. And they were very idealistic.

And so they just went down this path of trying to get somewhere that was impossible. It was impossible to, you know, have a perfect communist country and it's impossible to, you know, have a better world with having nuclear secrets shared, you know, like keeping nuclear secrets hostage and like kind of glooming that above everybody, I think is not a way to peace. But I think that they were doomed and like they really wanted a peaceful world. And they thought the way to do it was to kind of equalize this threat. and once they kind of did that there was no turning back yeah you know and they you know they died on the same day their their poor kids ended up in like homes and they're you know just they're like my mom was a normal mom you know but you're like well she wasn't she wasn't yeah yeah kids if you think your ideology is worth to be anything for chill out a little bit for real that's a 100% yes it'll all be okay like the pendulum always swings i know that everything seems like the biggest possible yes it always always swings yes yes and if someone starts to recruit you to doing things

that are like secret then like you're probably gonna be in trouble yeah and you should calm down yeah yeah so enjoy your glass of vodka oh i know i need i do need some vodka i'll buy some for when i do see that mushroom cloud it's 9.31 a.m over there isn't it uh yeah it is i don't have any vodka but i can go buy some good good well thank you taylor for your story thank you far as i'm glad i think those tied together i think we're talking about you know the big things and and why people do do go off the edge maybe we should talk about what we're going to we should discuss our topics before we do them we could do that i mean yeah but like i don't want to change my topic because i just can't research two things in a week yeah that's fair that's

we'll figure it out but thanks everyone for listening and thank you for your feedback and thank you for your reviews on on apple podcasts please do that if you haven't already please tell people i'm trying to tell everyone that i know but please tell more people email us at dune to fail pod at gmail.com if you have any ideas follow on social media at doomed to fail pod thanks taylor thanks farce i hope we feel better i hope so too i'm gonna go ahead and kill the recording okay