In 1950, Julius Rosenberg, his wife, Ethel, and her brother, army sergeant David Greenglass, were arrested in New York City, charged with having transmitted secret military information to the Soviet Union. Their arrests followed the arrest in England of Klaus Fuchs, an English physicist who had worked on the development of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos and that of a Philadelphia chemist, Harry Gold.

Both Fuchs and Sergeant Greenglass had passed on atomic secrets to Gold, a courier, who in turn transmitted them to the Soviets. Greenglass testified that his brother-in-law had persuaded him to steal the secrets. On the strength of the testimony of Greenglass and his wife, the Rosenbergs were found guilty and sentenced to death. They appealed to the Supreme Court, but the appeal was denied. The death sentence created an international outcry, similar to the reaction 30 years earlier to the Sacco-Vanzetti. Despite appeals on their behalf, the Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953, a time when the spirit of McCarthyism was at its zenith.

Although it is now generally accepted that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of spying and that Ethel knew of his activities, it is equally true that the death penalty, particularly for Ethel, was an extreme punishment, inextricably involved in the politics of the period. A measure of the severity of the sentence is evident in the sentences of the two spies who actually stole the secrets: Fuchs served 14 years in prison, while Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years.

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