Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs: The Controversial Trials of the Alleged Soviet Spies at the Height of the Red Scare

*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the trial and key parts of the testimony *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "I am amazed; until the day I die I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter.” – Alger Hiss "This death sentence is not surprising. It had to be. There had to be a Rosenberg case, because there had to be an intensification of the hysteria in America to make the Korean War acceptable to the American people. There had to be hysteria and a fear sent through America in order to get increased war budgets. And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna get five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for contempt of court, but we're gonna kill ya!” – Julius Rosenberg Shortly after World War II, Congress’ House Committee on Un-American Activities began investigating Americans across the country for suspected ties to Communism. Among the people called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, none are as controversial as Alger Hiss. Hiss had graduated from Harvard Law, after which he worked as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, worked in the Roosevelt administration for the Agricultural Adjustment Association, and was Head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. That background didn’t exactly sound like one held by a Soviet spy, let alone a Communist, but Elizabeth Bentley, a former Communist, notified the Committee about a suspected spy ring and named several names, including Hiss. More notably, Hiss was also accused of being a Communist and Soviet spy by an admitted Communist, Whittaker Chambers. The Hiss case came at a time when the Committee was populated by right-wing zealots, including a young Congressman from California named Richard Nixon. Decorum was in scarce supply, and “Hiss was everything Nixon despised...wealthy, liberal, educated and handsome.” Although Hiss was believed at first and Nixon was cast as the public villain for doggedly questioning him over Communist ties, Chambers eventually produced State Department documents typed on Hiss’s typewriter, and Hiss was forced to admit that he previously knew and had associated with Chambers, who had renounced his Communism and had become editor of Time Magazine. Though the FBI and the Committee were never able to prove Hiss was a spy, they were able to get Hiss on a charge of perjury, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison, and the conviction of Hiss added to the luster of Nixon’s anti-communist credentials. The case of Alger Hiss and the rise of McCarthyism were undoubtedly instrumental in the way that one of the most notorious cases in American history unfolded in the early 1950s. After years of keeping tabs on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the two Communist sympathizers were indicted on charges of treason and conspiracy to commit espionage for passing off secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. In the context of the Cold War and the Korean War, there could hardly be more serious charges, but the couple strenuously asserted their innocence, even after they were implicated by Ethel’s own brother, David Greenglass. Throughout the trial and its aftermath, many Americans believed the Rosenbergs were innocent and/or were facing an unduly harsh death sentence. Indeed, authorities had hoped to wring confessions out of the two by threatening them with the chair, but they held steadfast all the way up until their executions on June 19, 1953. In the over 60 years since, there has been plenty of debate over whether the two of them were guilty, and, if so, what the extent of their espionage was. While historians have used declassified documents and memoirs of involved individuals to reach the widespread belief that Julius Rosenberg did commit espionage, there is still a lot of doubt regarding Ethel’s involvement.