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The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair
In 1951, Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiring to steal atomic secrets. Their '53 execution tore American apart. 50 years later, the debate over their guilt, & the emotions unleashed by a case that fueled McCarthyism & the cold war, still reverberate. One man doomed them: David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, a young army sergeant who spied for the USSR at Los Alamos during WWII & whose testimony later sealed his sister & brother-in-law's fate. After serving a decade in prison, he was released in '60 & vanished. But NY Times editor Roberts found him &, after 14 years, persuaded him to talk. Drawn from the 1st unrestricted-access interviews ever granted by Greenglass & supplemented by revelations from dozens of other players in the case--including the Russian agent who controlled Julius Rosenberg; by newly declassified US & USSR government documents; & by personal letters never before published, among them one from Einstein; The Brother is a mesmerizing inside story of misplaced idealism, love & betrayal behind the atomic-espionage case that J. Edgar Hoover called the Crime of the Century. In over 50 hours of taped conversations with the author, Greenglass detailed his recruitment into espionage on Manhattan's Lower East Side, how he spied for the USSR at American's most secret military installation, & how the plot unraveled & led to the arrests of David, Julius & Ethel. Beyond that, this book reveals how Greenglass perjured himself in court--testimony that strapped his sister & brother-in-law into Sing Sing's electric chair. Delivering a narrative punch on every page, The Brother is the story of a family. It's a story of atomic espionage. It's the story of the trial that turned a nation upside down & that still divides the American left.
560 pages, Hardcover
First published September 18, 2001
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July 3, 2022
“The execution protocol is precise: an initial 2,000-volt shock for 3 seconds, dropping to 500 volts for 57 seconds, back to 2,000 volts, to 500 for another 57 seconds, and then to 2,000 for a final few seconds. Three jolts in all. The intermissions are to prevent the surge of electrical energy from cooking the flesh. As it is, body temperature reaches about 130 degrees, roughly the lukewarmness of rare roast beef. The temperature of the brain rises almost to the boiling point of water. Wisps of blue-gray smoke curl from the leather face mask. The mask is worn not as a convenience to the condemned but as a palliative for the witnesses. It prevents the eyes from popping out of the head…”
- Sam Roberts, The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case
“It was a queer sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs,” Esther Greenwood says at the beginning of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. “I’m stupid about executions,” she continues, “and that’s all there was to read about in the papers – goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway.”
This famous opening perfectly describes the way the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg grimly captured the attention of a nation. When they died, on June 19, 1953, we were at the height of the Cold War, the Soviets had the Bomb, and Americans were fighting Communists in Korea. It was not a good time to be convicted of having passed nuclear-related intelligence to the U.S.S.R.
I’m a relative latecomer to this topic. Indeed, Sam Roberts’s The Brother is the first book I’ve read on the Rosenbergs, and it is good enough to be my last. It is up-to-date, it is comprehensive, and it is a propulsive read, even at 517 pages of text. From its tense opening – describing the last days of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in Sing Sing Prison – to the late reveals and confessions, The Brother is hard to put down, and harder to forget.
Roberts’s tale encompasses paranoia, hysteria, and overreactions. It is also about betrayals, to one’s country, one’s family, and one’s friends. By the time Roberts has finished his excavations, you will be asking hard questions about loyalty.
***
The first thing to note – and it is important – is that The Brother was first released in 2001. Since that time, a lot has happened with regard to the Rosenberg case. Recognizing this, The Brother was reissued in 2014 with a new epilogue. Though it somehow manages a grammatical miscue on its very last line, this epilogue – and thus, this version of the book – is absolutely necessary, bolstering some of Roberts’s original contentions, but altering others.
***
The Brother of the title refers to David Greenglass, sibling of Ethel, brother-in-law to Julius. At first glance, it might seem an oblique way of taking on the Rosenberg case. The central participants are moved to the periphery, while David takes center stage. The story is told largely from his perspective. It works because David is a fascinating, complicated figure. A man who is at once both cowardly and bold, candid and deceiving; a man who has clearly constructed a story that lets him live with himself.
During World War II, David was an enlisted man serving as a machinist at Los Alamos, part of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. David and his wife, Ruth, were recruited by a Soviet agent, and began passing intelligence to a courier named Harry Gold. The value of this intelligence is debatable, but David definitely passed on crude drawings of the Fat Man implosion device.
After the war, and in the wake of spy Klaus Fuchs’s arrest, the FBI began investigating Los Alamos leaks, and ended up arresting David. In a desperate attempt to protect his wife, he sang a song of treason that implicated his sister and brother-in-law. It is a decision that David seems rather unapologetic about, and would make an excellent case study in situational ethics.
***
The backbone of The Brother comes from Roberts’s interviews with David. Roberts tracked him down – a rather extensive effort he describes towards the end – and spoke with him for some 50 hours. He attempts to corroborate David’s story whenever possible, and he lets you know when he could not. It’s a tall task as David is the embodiment of the Liar’s Dilemma, living cocooned in a dense web of deceits, half-truths, and prevarications.
At almost every step along the path, Roberts had to shine light into dark corners, where time and deception had gathered to obscure truth. Tracking down David Greenglass is a coup unto itself, but his commendable investigatory efforts go beyond that. He accumulates a mass of primary source material, which includes getting Morton Sobell to confess to spying, and suing the Federal Government for the grand jury testimony.
A lot of work went into this, long before Roberts typed the first word. Nevertheless, after all this detective work, he still delivers a well-paced, gripping narrative. In particular, Roberts meticulously recounts the Rosenberg’s legal case, noting important evidence (including grand jury testimony) that never made it before the jury. I thought the descriptions of the trial among the book’s best sections, and appreciated that Roberts made generous use of the actual transcripts. He also gives a deft characterization of Judge Irving Kaufman, the Red-hating black robe who sent the Rosenbergs to the chair (and might have cost himself a seat on the Supreme Court in doing so).
***
Even today, most aspects of the Rosenberg case are controversial. Despite being relatively well-read in historical topics, I’ve somehow missed decades of passionate debate. To that end, Roberts does a really good job of explaining all the points of controversy, presenting the evidence, and formulating judicious opinions. His conclusions are restrained and reflective of the complexity of the Rosenbergs, the Greenglasses, and the world in which they lived.
Perhaps I would have had a different reaction to this if I had already formed a strong opinion, but I don’t think so. Life is seldom a binary situation of good and evil, black and white. Most of the time, it’s not even gray. Rather, it’s a combination of every color, much like when my kids mix all the separate canisters of Play-Doh into one inseparable ball.
***
In coming to a conclusion about David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg, and the electric chair at Sing Sing, we must grapple with several different, sometimes contradictory realities.
First, there is a profound moral dimension to spying for another country. That is especially true of a person spying for the Soviet Union in the years following the Second World War. There are a lot of fair criticisms to be leveled at the United States for its behavior during the Cold War. But the Soviet Union – especially under Joseph Stalin – was a murderous, quasi-criminal regime that killed, imprisoned, and enslaved millions of people. Even if we attribute the initial decision to idealism, sticking with Stalin after the famines, after the purges, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and after the Iron Curtain is not naivety. It is mendacity.
Second, it has been satisfactorily proven that Julius Rosenberg was a spy. Declassified Soviet cables, codenamed VENONA, revealed him as a courier and recruiter. One of his codefendants, Morton Sobell, also used the occasion of his 91st birthday to reveal his guilt and implicate Julius. It’s unclear whether Julius actually passed on any atomic secrets to the Soviets, but he certainly gave them a top secret proximity fuse that was later used in surface-to-air-missiles that killed American pilots in Korea.
As to Ethel, the VENONA decrypts tend to show that she also participated in espionage activities, helping to recruit her brother in the first place. However, there was no evidence – other than David’s and Ruth’s contradictory stories, which he later recanted – that she ever helped in furtherance of any conspiracy. Ultimately, it stretches credulity to believe she did not know of her husband’s activities, and in light of Julius’s factual guilt, the contemporary protestations of innocence by both husband and wife are diminished.
Finally, points one and two do not mean that the Rosenbergs got a fair trial, or that their punishment – electrocuted to death – was merited. Clearly, the government’s case was grossly mishandled, likely because they were trying to convict the couple without their best evidence, which they could not reveal.
Had the Rosenbergs been caught in the Soviet Union spying for the United States, they would have been given a show trial, denied an appeal, and then likely shot in the back of the neck in the basement of the Lubyanka. This reality makes the United States look worse, not better. If the Cold War was a battle of principles, with ideas largely – though not always – displaying actual force, then this was a grand opportunity to show restraint, mercy, and compassion. Instead, the executive branch and the judicial branch both decided to play at their opponent’s level, discrediting themselves in the process.
***
Throughout The Brother, Roberts excels at demonstrating how opposite things can be true. How David can be a craven liar, yet oddly principled in his fashion. How Julius could be guilty of treason, yet be failed by the justice system. How a country can be committed to certain lofty values, yet lose their grip on them in the midst of fear and uncertainty, learning far too late that righteousness lost can never be regained.
- Sam Roberts, The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case
“It was a queer sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs,” Esther Greenwood says at the beginning of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. “I’m stupid about executions,” she continues, “and that’s all there was to read about in the papers – goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway.”
This famous opening perfectly describes the way the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg grimly captured the attention of a nation. When they died, on June 19, 1953, we were at the height of the Cold War, the Soviets had the Bomb, and Americans were fighting Communists in Korea. It was not a good time to be convicted of having passed nuclear-related intelligence to the U.S.S.R.
I’m a relative latecomer to this topic. Indeed, Sam Roberts’s The Brother is the first book I’ve read on the Rosenbergs, and it is good enough to be my last. It is up-to-date, it is comprehensive, and it is a propulsive read, even at 517 pages of text. From its tense opening – describing the last days of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in Sing Sing Prison – to the late reveals and confessions, The Brother is hard to put down, and harder to forget.
Roberts’s tale encompasses paranoia, hysteria, and overreactions. It is also about betrayals, to one’s country, one’s family, and one’s friends. By the time Roberts has finished his excavations, you will be asking hard questions about loyalty.
***
The first thing to note – and it is important – is that The Brother was first released in 2001. Since that time, a lot has happened with regard to the Rosenberg case. Recognizing this, The Brother was reissued in 2014 with a new epilogue. Though it somehow manages a grammatical miscue on its very last line, this epilogue – and thus, this version of the book – is absolutely necessary, bolstering some of Roberts’s original contentions, but altering others.
***
The Brother of the title refers to David Greenglass, sibling of Ethel, brother-in-law to Julius. At first glance, it might seem an oblique way of taking on the Rosenberg case. The central participants are moved to the periphery, while David takes center stage. The story is told largely from his perspective. It works because David is a fascinating, complicated figure. A man who is at once both cowardly and bold, candid and deceiving; a man who has clearly constructed a story that lets him live with himself.
During World War II, David was an enlisted man serving as a machinist at Los Alamos, part of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. David and his wife, Ruth, were recruited by a Soviet agent, and began passing intelligence to a courier named Harry Gold. The value of this intelligence is debatable, but David definitely passed on crude drawings of the Fat Man implosion device.
After the war, and in the wake of spy Klaus Fuchs’s arrest, the FBI began investigating Los Alamos leaks, and ended up arresting David. In a desperate attempt to protect his wife, he sang a song of treason that implicated his sister and brother-in-law. It is a decision that David seems rather unapologetic about, and would make an excellent case study in situational ethics.
***
The backbone of The Brother comes from Roberts’s interviews with David. Roberts tracked him down – a rather extensive effort he describes towards the end – and spoke with him for some 50 hours. He attempts to corroborate David’s story whenever possible, and he lets you know when he could not. It’s a tall task as David is the embodiment of the Liar’s Dilemma, living cocooned in a dense web of deceits, half-truths, and prevarications.
At almost every step along the path, Roberts had to shine light into dark corners, where time and deception had gathered to obscure truth. Tracking down David Greenglass is a coup unto itself, but his commendable investigatory efforts go beyond that. He accumulates a mass of primary source material, which includes getting Morton Sobell to confess to spying, and suing the Federal Government for the grand jury testimony.
A lot of work went into this, long before Roberts typed the first word. Nevertheless, after all this detective work, he still delivers a well-paced, gripping narrative. In particular, Roberts meticulously recounts the Rosenberg’s legal case, noting important evidence (including grand jury testimony) that never made it before the jury. I thought the descriptions of the trial among the book’s best sections, and appreciated that Roberts made generous use of the actual transcripts. He also gives a deft characterization of Judge Irving Kaufman, the Red-hating black robe who sent the Rosenbergs to the chair (and might have cost himself a seat on the Supreme Court in doing so).
***
Even today, most aspects of the Rosenberg case are controversial. Despite being relatively well-read in historical topics, I’ve somehow missed decades of passionate debate. To that end, Roberts does a really good job of explaining all the points of controversy, presenting the evidence, and formulating judicious opinions. His conclusions are restrained and reflective of the complexity of the Rosenbergs, the Greenglasses, and the world in which they lived.
Perhaps I would have had a different reaction to this if I had already formed a strong opinion, but I don’t think so. Life is seldom a binary situation of good and evil, black and white. Most of the time, it’s not even gray. Rather, it’s a combination of every color, much like when my kids mix all the separate canisters of Play-Doh into one inseparable ball.
***
In coming to a conclusion about David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg, Julius Rosenberg, and the electric chair at Sing Sing, we must grapple with several different, sometimes contradictory realities.
First, there is a profound moral dimension to spying for another country. That is especially true of a person spying for the Soviet Union in the years following the Second World War. There are a lot of fair criticisms to be leveled at the United States for its behavior during the Cold War. But the Soviet Union – especially under Joseph Stalin – was a murderous, quasi-criminal regime that killed, imprisoned, and enslaved millions of people. Even if we attribute the initial decision to idealism, sticking with Stalin after the famines, after the purges, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and after the Iron Curtain is not naivety. It is mendacity.
Second, it has been satisfactorily proven that Julius Rosenberg was a spy. Declassified Soviet cables, codenamed VENONA, revealed him as a courier and recruiter. One of his codefendants, Morton Sobell, also used the occasion of his 91st birthday to reveal his guilt and implicate Julius. It’s unclear whether Julius actually passed on any atomic secrets to the Soviets, but he certainly gave them a top secret proximity fuse that was later used in surface-to-air-missiles that killed American pilots in Korea.
As to Ethel, the VENONA decrypts tend to show that she also participated in espionage activities, helping to recruit her brother in the first place. However, there was no evidence – other than David’s and Ruth’s contradictory stories, which he later recanted – that she ever helped in furtherance of any conspiracy. Ultimately, it stretches credulity to believe she did not know of her husband’s activities, and in light of Julius’s factual guilt, the contemporary protestations of innocence by both husband and wife are diminished.
Finally, points one and two do not mean that the Rosenbergs got a fair trial, or that their punishment – electrocuted to death – was merited. Clearly, the government’s case was grossly mishandled, likely because they were trying to convict the couple without their best evidence, which they could not reveal.
Had the Rosenbergs been caught in the Soviet Union spying for the United States, they would have been given a show trial, denied an appeal, and then likely shot in the back of the neck in the basement of the Lubyanka. This reality makes the United States look worse, not better. If the Cold War was a battle of principles, with ideas largely – though not always – displaying actual force, then this was a grand opportunity to show restraint, mercy, and compassion. Instead, the executive branch and the judicial branch both decided to play at their opponent’s level, discrediting themselves in the process.
***
Throughout The Brother, Roberts excels at demonstrating how opposite things can be true. How David can be a craven liar, yet oddly principled in his fashion. How Julius could be guilty of treason, yet be failed by the justice system. How a country can be committed to certain lofty values, yet lose their grip on them in the midst of fear and uncertainty, learning far too late that righteousness lost can never be regained.
January 13, 2020
Fresh recounting of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spy case, focusing on David Greenglass, Ethel's brother and the key witness in the Federal prosecution of the Rosenbergs. Roberts shows Greenglass as an anxious Jewish New Yorker who drifted early into radical politics; his brother-in-law Julius, already in contact with Soviet intelligence, recruits Greenglass as a spy. To his surprise, and the benefit of his handlers, his work as a military machinist led him to Los Alamos, where he played a peripheral role in the Manhattan Project - and passed nuclear secrets to the Soviets. Cornered by Federal investigations, Greenglass agrees to turn on his sister and brother-and-law in exchange for a reduced sentence...which leads to his ignominy and disgrace. Roberts presents this tale in a crisp narrative that, if it doesn't supplant Radosh and Milton's still-definitive The Rosenberg File, is lucid and highly readable. He doesn't dispute Julius Rosenberg's guilt (though like most writers, he leaves considerable doubt as to Ethel's involvement); indeed, his portrayal of Julius is generally less-than-flattering, as a small-time ideologue too big for his britches. Still, he shows that Greenglass's testimony was self-serving and filled with lies and half-truths, and argues that he was probably more guilty than Julius or Ethel. Roberts' trump card, an interview with Greenglass which informs the final chapters, shows him mostly unrepentant about his actions, quite happy to have disappeared into anonymity even as debates about the case, and his involvement, rage on. Excellent, if sometimes judgmental recounting of a notorious spy saga.
July 29, 2015
Absolutely one of the best histories I've read, and a maddening, baffling, surprisingly heartbreaking biography. David Greenglass was (Baruch Hashem) an absolute shonda who probably never was free of any guilt because he refused to admit any responsibility or culpability in the death (murder, really) of his sister. He was a weak man. This book devastates his memory. Anyway, read it and then let's stay up ALL NIGHT talking about it.
August 3, 2013
I read this many years ago but have decided to write a short review. I am a self-professed Rosenberg-case "junkie." I have read a large percentage of what has been written about the arrests, trial and executions. I well remember the debates between the Schneirs and Ronald Radosh in the 1980s over the innocence or guilt of the Rosenbergs, particularly Julius. I must admit that, at the time, in my twenties and Left-leaning, I sided with the Schneirs and believed that the Rosenbergs had been innocent--victims of the Cold War, prosecutor Roy Cohn and the inept judge Irving Kaufman. But as Sam Roberts shows here with impeccable research, the story was far more complicated. Roberts actually tracked down Julius Rosenberg's brother-in-law, David Greenglass, and got him to speak on the record. This conversation, plus newly-released documents from the Soviets, proved that Julius did indeed recruit Greenglass into a conspiracy to give Atomic bomb secrets to the Soviets. Ethel's participation, if at all, was much more peripheral. So while the execution of the Rosenbergs remains an abomination, they were not simply innocent victims.
Roberts is a journalist, not a historian, so he did not focus particularly on the historiography of the Rosenberg case--that is, how it has been written and rewritten over time. Still, "The Brother" is a great example of how most historical research is incomplete and often biased. Ideally, ongoing research brings us closer to the truth of what happened in stories like that of the Rosenbergs. Lastly, if this topic interests you, I urge you to read "The Book of Daniel" by E.L. Doctorow, a brilliant and moving fictionalized account of the Rosenberg saga.
Roberts is a journalist, not a historian, so he did not focus particularly on the historiography of the Rosenberg case--that is, how it has been written and rewritten over time. Still, "The Brother" is a great example of how most historical research is incomplete and often biased. Ideally, ongoing research brings us closer to the truth of what happened in stories like that of the Rosenbergs. Lastly, if this topic interests you, I urge you to read "The Book of Daniel" by E.L. Doctorow, a brilliant and moving fictionalized account of the Rosenberg saga.
April 27, 2020
This is a history of the Rosenberg atomic espionage case focusing on David Greenglass, younger brother of Ethel Rosenberg. Based on research which included one of the only two interviews granted by Greenglass, Roberts' account appears thorough, promising to dispel much of the controversy surrounding this, 'the case of the century'. It certainly helped me pierce through the arguments periodically appearing in liberal magazine letters and book columns, arguments based on details formerly beyond my ken.
Simply summarized, Roberts' conclusions are that Greenglass was indeed a spy at Los Alamos, conveying relatively useless (compared to other spies such as Klaus Fuchs) information through his wife to brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg and through him to Soviet handlers. In exchange for his wife not being prosecuted, the Greenglass couple turned in evidence leading to the conviction of Julius and Ethel, even though the evidence against Ethel remains highly suspect, she serving primarily as a bargaining chip to get Julius to name names, something he never did. Further, their executions, especially her's, were, in the opinion of Roberts, ill considered but in keeping with the burgeoning cold war hysteria of the time.
Simply summarized, Roberts' conclusions are that Greenglass was indeed a spy at Los Alamos, conveying relatively useless (compared to other spies such as Klaus Fuchs) information through his wife to brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg and through him to Soviet handlers. In exchange for his wife not being prosecuted, the Greenglass couple turned in evidence leading to the conviction of Julius and Ethel, even though the evidence against Ethel remains highly suspect, she serving primarily as a bargaining chip to get Julius to name names, something he never did. Further, their executions, especially her's, were, in the opinion of Roberts, ill considered but in keeping with the burgeoning cold war hysteria of the time.
August 28, 2013
I approached this book without greatly detailed knowledge of the Rosenberg spy case and trial. Roberts is clearly contemptuous of the feckless spy turned informant/stool pigeon David Greenglass. Yet bearing in mind the author's pronounced bias against the subject of his investigation, I find that Roberts nonetheless makes a good job of supporting with historical facts his argument that Greenglass and his wife Ruth were at the very least cowardly prevaricators in their testimony about their own involvement in Manhattan Project spying, and very likely perjured their way out of proportionate punishment by inventing a smoking gun - a fictitious typewriter on which critical messages supposedly were composed - which sent a far less complicit woman, Ethel Rosenberg, to the electric chair alongside her very guilty husband Julius Rosenberg.
While Ethel Rosenberg clearly was intellectually sympathetic to the Russian cause during and shortly after WWII, as were many Americans, Roberts finds no evidence that she played a knowing part in the atomic espionage in which Julius and her brother Greenglass were instrumental - and in which Ruth Greenglass played the part of informed and consenting contact between Soviet agents and the scientific team at Los Alamos.
In the realm of harm caused, Roberts makes a good case that the secrets David Greenglass passed to Julius Rosenberg, who passed them to the Soviets, ultimately had very little impact on the atomic race or the space race that followed - their information did not help the Soviets develop anything, merely confirmed the path the Americans were on. His analysis of the sea change in Soviet-American relations between the early and late 1940s is astute (within months after the close of WWII the Soviets were portrayed, by US government and media alike, no longer as our spunky, embattled allies championing the Nazi-beleaguered eastern European states and tenaciously holding the eastern front, but as a power-mad, repressive, murderous regime), and illustrates how the naivete of idealistic American communists ultimately paved the way for the over-reaction of the McCarthy era, including that of Jewish law enforcement and court officers anxious that the Rosenberg/Greenglass actions not reflect poorly on the perceived patriotism of the Jewish-American population at large.
One unfortunate result of this abrupt change in American mood from jingoistic fraternity with Moscow to suspicion and fearmongering was that Ethel Rosenberg, as one of the naive American supporters of the Soviet experiment whom Stalin callously termed "useful idiots," was sacrificed in a disproportionately punished case of minor espionage - a case in which her husband, brother, and sister-in-law all were far more complicit, yet her brother served only a short prison term while Ruth got off scot free in exchange for their testimony implicating the Rosenbergs. The non-capital sentences of numerous other spies past and present, who in some cases have passed infinitely more damaging information to foreign powers, illustrate not only this over-reaction, but also the essential injustice of the trial and the skewed priorities of the several federal agents, lawyers and judges who prosecuted it with more of a mind to their personal ambitions than to carrying out justice.
More than forty years later, with Stalinist excess exposed as a morally reprehensible reign of terror, Soviet-style communism debunked as an unholy and greed-fraught corruption of economic ideals, and the Iron Curtain in tatters, Roberts managed to locate and interview David Greenglass, another "useful idiot" who, Roberts discovered, harbors not a shred of contriteness or regret other than that he was caught and served a short sentence. That a probably-innocent woman was executed solely on the strength of this amoral schmuck's perjury remains one of the most poignant and repugnant small outrages of the Cold War, and sounds yet another cautionary note about the brutal, irreversible finality of capital punishment.
While Ethel Rosenberg clearly was intellectually sympathetic to the Russian cause during and shortly after WWII, as were many Americans, Roberts finds no evidence that she played a knowing part in the atomic espionage in which Julius and her brother Greenglass were instrumental - and in which Ruth Greenglass played the part of informed and consenting contact between Soviet agents and the scientific team at Los Alamos.
In the realm of harm caused, Roberts makes a good case that the secrets David Greenglass passed to Julius Rosenberg, who passed them to the Soviets, ultimately had very little impact on the atomic race or the space race that followed - their information did not help the Soviets develop anything, merely confirmed the path the Americans were on. His analysis of the sea change in Soviet-American relations between the early and late 1940s is astute (within months after the close of WWII the Soviets were portrayed, by US government and media alike, no longer as our spunky, embattled allies championing the Nazi-beleaguered eastern European states and tenaciously holding the eastern front, but as a power-mad, repressive, murderous regime), and illustrates how the naivete of idealistic American communists ultimately paved the way for the over-reaction of the McCarthy era, including that of Jewish law enforcement and court officers anxious that the Rosenberg/Greenglass actions not reflect poorly on the perceived patriotism of the Jewish-American population at large.
One unfortunate result of this abrupt change in American mood from jingoistic fraternity with Moscow to suspicion and fearmongering was that Ethel Rosenberg, as one of the naive American supporters of the Soviet experiment whom Stalin callously termed "useful idiots," was sacrificed in a disproportionately punished case of minor espionage - a case in which her husband, brother, and sister-in-law all were far more complicit, yet her brother served only a short prison term while Ruth got off scot free in exchange for their testimony implicating the Rosenbergs. The non-capital sentences of numerous other spies past and present, who in some cases have passed infinitely more damaging information to foreign powers, illustrate not only this over-reaction, but also the essential injustice of the trial and the skewed priorities of the several federal agents, lawyers and judges who prosecuted it with more of a mind to their personal ambitions than to carrying out justice.
More than forty years later, with Stalinist excess exposed as a morally reprehensible reign of terror, Soviet-style communism debunked as an unholy and greed-fraught corruption of economic ideals, and the Iron Curtain in tatters, Roberts managed to locate and interview David Greenglass, another "useful idiot" who, Roberts discovered, harbors not a shred of contriteness or regret other than that he was caught and served a short sentence. That a probably-innocent woman was executed solely on the strength of this amoral schmuck's perjury remains one of the most poignant and repugnant small outrages of the Cold War, and sounds yet another cautionary note about the brutal, irreversible finality of capital punishment.
March 28, 2018
I have great respect for all writers, but particularly nonfiction writers, who must do prodigious amounts of research which can take years, and then must try to write a cohesive and compelling narrative. Few succeed, in part because so many nonfiction writers feel they must put ALL of their research into the final product.
Sam Roberts did just that. He spent years researching this book, garnered an enormous amount of material, and put ALL of his research into the book. The result: an exhaustive and EXHAUSTING book! Overall, I learned a lot, but I SLOGGED through this book. It was too long, too detailed, and highly repetitive. A book half of its length would have been far better!
Sam Roberts did just that. He spent years researching this book, garnered an enormous amount of material, and put ALL of his research into the book. The result: an exhaustive and EXHAUSTING book! Overall, I learned a lot, but I SLOGGED through this book. It was too long, too detailed, and highly repetitive. A book half of its length would have been far better!
February 17, 2011
Sometimes I wonder how I got to be nearly 59 years old and not know this or other real stories of people who have lived in my life time.
Justice is a strange and elusive thing.
Justice is a strange and elusive thing.
August 16, 2021
I was inspired by reviews of Anne Seba's new book on Ethel Rosenberg (Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy) to dig into the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. Other than E.L. Doctorow's Book of Daniel, a fictional account of the case I read in the 1970's, and a documentary directed by the Rosenberg's grandaughter some 20 years ago, I hadn't really put in the time to understand and contextualize the case. I decided on Sam Robert's (one of my favorite NY Times columnists and reporters) door stoper of a book called "The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case", centering on David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother, whose testimony sent his sister and her husband to the electric chair. It was a long, but ultimately, satisfying - and edifying - read. After I finished the book I went back and rewatched Ivy Meeropol's HBO documentary on her grandparents ("Heir to an Execution") and was able to make sense of all the talking heads. I will read Anne Sebba's new book and reread Doctorow.
October 2, 2021
I heard about this book from the podcast Crime of the Century. The Rosenberg case was complex due to anti-communist feelings coupled with the drama of family confessions leading to executions in addition to remaining questions as to how valuable the espionage really was. I had heard of the case first in a history class as a kid, but I wanted to learn a more modern perspective as presented in this book.
As always, there isn't a lot of black and white answers on this case, but I enjoyed hearing the evidence from David Greenglass and other sources. The book could have been shorter (the middle dragged a bit), but I sped through the last 200 pages. If you want a detailed, balanced book on this case, this is the book for you.
As always, there isn't a lot of black and white answers on this case, but I enjoyed hearing the evidence from David Greenglass and other sources. The book could have been shorter (the middle dragged a bit), but I sped through the last 200 pages. If you want a detailed, balanced book on this case, this is the book for you.
June 16, 2009
This is a really interesting book if you're into historical books and learning about spies, etc. It's based on the author's actual interviews with David Greenglass, and tells the Rosenbergs' story from an insider's perspective. It gets a little tedious with the details of the bomb, etc. but is a really good read and very informative and educational. It's a good "back burner" book that you pick up while reading other books because it's super long.
March 4, 2017
The Brother is a tell-all story of the Rosenberg's Spy Case
A husband & wife become spies in WW2 & gave the big secret (How to build an atomic bomb) to the Russians & then paid for the theft by being electrocuted in the early 1950s. A complicated tale with many characters with varying degrees of guilt. One version is this well researched somewhat hard to follow account.
A husband & wife become spies in WW2 & gave the big secret (How to build an atomic bomb) to the Russians & then paid for the theft by being electrocuted in the early 1950s. A complicated tale with many characters with varying degrees of guilt. One version is this well researched somewhat hard to follow account.
October 30, 2013
Very interesting. I certainly learned much about the whole Rosenberg affair and related history than I knew before. It bogged down in places with the incredible detail from hearings, interrogations, etc.
March 11, 2010
This book was a fake drama. Roberts did a lot of research, and the story is an excellent story, but there was a good bit of filler and false suspense in there.
December 29, 2014
My father is in this story - search for Bederson!
September 25, 2024
For a long time, I've wanted to learn more about the Rosenbergs since I knew next to nothing about them. This is a fairly updated, mostly unbiased book that is focused on Ethel Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass...the one who provided the information needed to convict and execute both Ethel and her husband Julius.
BOY THIS BOOK WAS LONG. Over 500 pages of thickly dense information (with footnotes!) - I started wishing I'd just read a Wiki article or something, but I made it all the way through. If you're someone who really really wants to get into the weeds on this case, the Communist party, politics, the war, atomic energy information, etc. It truly got to be a bit mind-numbing after a while, but it's written at a level that is easily consumed, it's just really minute details, and a lot is truly regurgitated throughout the book, as if the author just couldn't handle leaving out details that would have been covered multiple times throughout the trial.
Although it's clear the Rosenberg's "did it" - and should have been convicted, the death penalty was really inappropriate considering the kind of info that was passed, their involvement, and the issues the trial posed just due to not being able to speak freely in court (because of how confidential info that was, it was hard to handle evidence), etc.
Anyway, if you really want to nerd out - go for it, otherwise just read a Wiki article.
4/5
BOY THIS BOOK WAS LONG. Over 500 pages of thickly dense information (with footnotes!) - I started wishing I'd just read a Wiki article or something, but I made it all the way through. If you're someone who really really wants to get into the weeds on this case, the Communist party, politics, the war, atomic energy information, etc. It truly got to be a bit mind-numbing after a while, but it's written at a level that is easily consumed, it's just really minute details, and a lot is truly regurgitated throughout the book, as if the author just couldn't handle leaving out details that would have been covered multiple times throughout the trial.
Although it's clear the Rosenberg's "did it" - and should have been convicted, the death penalty was really inappropriate considering the kind of info that was passed, their involvement, and the issues the trial posed just due to not being able to speak freely in court (because of how confidential info that was, it was hard to handle evidence), etc.
Anyway, if you really want to nerd out - go for it, otherwise just read a Wiki article.
4/5
December 28, 2019
Interesting look into the life of David Greenglass, who was a Communist spy and the main witness against Ethel Rosenberg, his sister, and her husband Julius. The book contains an incredible amount of detail, including many specifics that don't relate to the case, resulting in a long, slow read. The author does nothing to hide his feelings on two points: 1) He despises David Greenglass, and 2) Ethel Rosenberg should not have been executed. On the second point, I personally don't think it's wise to execute anyone, regardless of how much evidence there is against them; however, thinking of Ethel Rosenberg as innocent requires a lot of very generous assumptions about her motivations. On the first point, this book has made me certain of one thing: I really hope that when I'm elderly, some reporter doesn't show up to badger me with accusatory questions about things I said 50 years ago. I don't think I'd come across in a good light.
September 3, 2020
This is non-fiction and explains how the testimony of David Greenglass sent his sister and brother-in-law to the electric chair. The Manhattan Project has always interested me and I have been to Los Alamos, so I found this book very informative. This history was so convoluted and complicated, and the execution of Ethel Rosenberg was based on a lie. What was astounding to me was the total lack of remorse David Greenglass displayed for ALL of his actions. Mr. Roberts kept the secret of who David Greenglass became, I presume to protect his children and grandchildren. I can't imagine living with that kind of notoriety. The things people do...
November 8, 2021
Full five stars. Absolutely superb account of a difficult period in American Hisotry.
One of the questions that is somewhat difficult to understand from a late 20th and 21st century perspective is simply, what in the world were they thinking?
This is one of the few books on the Rosenbergs that provide some insight into their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors. The American Dream seemed hazy, nebulous, and unachievable, while the newly-formed Soviet Union seemed to promise a veritable paradise for the common man.
One of the questions that is somewhat difficult to understand from a late 20th and 21st century perspective is simply, what in the world were they thinking?
This is one of the few books on the Rosenbergs that provide some insight into their lives and the lives of their families and neighbors. The American Dream seemed hazy, nebulous, and unachievable, while the newly-formed Soviet Union seemed to promise a veritable paradise for the common man.
June 17, 2018
I enjoyed it. It does seem overly sympathetic to the Rosenbergs, especially Ethyl. There is probably a better primer available for those interested in the case as there is an assumption of knowledge of David and Ruth Greenglass in the beginning, but the ground is covered well enough that the reader can pick it up.
Still, there is so much in dispute that I will need to find some of the other books to fact check.
Still, there is so much in dispute that I will need to find some of the other books to fact check.
May 21, 2020
I was told about this book from my pastor who shares a love of reading and history as I do. I had very little knowledge of the Rosenbergs before this book but have since gathered much knowledge. A question that still stays in my mind is how could a brother do that to a sister? There are many eye opening events that happen in this book. I look forward to reading the Rosenbergs sons book soon to get their side of the story. Very interesting book for that time period!
December 11, 2018
Excellent read about about a fascinating episode in American history that it turns out I knew very little about. Written well (I could have done without all the footnotes) it gave incredible insight to the various "sides of the coin" to this story.
June 6, 2021
Definitely an an important book to read in the Rosenberg situation. I liked seeing things from different points of view.
It doesn't really address WHY he did what he did .. and it took over 500 pages for me to realize that. That's just the way it played out.
It doesn't really address WHY he did what he did .. and it took over 500 pages for me to realize that. That's just the way it played out.
April 24, 2018
I think this was a 3.5 to me. I thought about DNF’ing this one in the middle of the book. The middle drags harder than a broken muffler. However, I enjoyed the beginning and the end.
September 27, 2019
Well written and well researched. Sam Roberts presents a convoluted and murky story with clarity and cohesion.
March 11, 2021
This was a slog. I learned a lot but it was tough to get through.
June 25, 2021
Tragic, fascinating..
March 31, 2023
The book was too long too many tedious details. I lost interest
August 10, 2023
still a gripping story
This is a well written, detailed and factual book. It’s a fast read. Highly recommend for anyone interested in this slice of history and family drama.
This is a well written, detailed and factual book. It’s a fast read. Highly recommend for anyone interested in this slice of history and family drama.
August 20, 2023
I'm glad I read this book. It was a piece of history I'd only heard about but yet didn't know much.
Well worth the read.
Well worth the read.
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