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Was the Rosenberg trial a fair trial? This has been a very controversial and debated question throughout the 20th century. Many people believe that the Rosenbergs where innocent but had an unfair trial. Others believe that the Rosenbergs had a fair trial and are guilty because of their involvement with espionage and the Soviet Union. Overall the Trial is still a very controversial because of their involvement with communism, their convictions of espionage, and their show of treason against he United States with the Soviets. Before the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage, events took place first that made America anti-Communism. According to Douglas Linder, on March 1917 the Russian Revolution began which was the beginning of Communism. Another event was in 1939, when Britain and Germany went to war (James Sweeney). America looked down on Communism after confrontations with Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1917 an Espionage Act is put into terms (Douglas Linder). According to Douglas Linder, in 1923, a Communist Party was formed into the United States. Megan Barnett thought that the Rosenberg's joined a Communist Party due to Hitler's carnage.
The Soviet Union and America were allies in WWII during 1943. According to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the U.S. did not share information with the Soviet Union because they were worried about the Soviets' intentions. In 1949, the Soviet Union started to make atomic weapons. According to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, some U.S. people working on the Manhattan Project gave up information to the Soviets because they had pity on them. Thomas Reeves states on page 421, the Rosenbergs were the first American civilians to be executed for spying during the war. The Rosenbergs were an American famil...
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...age 481). According to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, both the Rosenbergs were killed in the electric chair. Ethel had to have three charges in the electric chair before being executed. According to Douglas Linder, the Rosenbergs funeral was held on June 21, 1953. The Rosenbergs were buried in the Wellwood Cemetery in New York.
Overall the Rosenbergs trial was very controversial. Many people believed the Rosenbergs were innocent but others believed they were guilty. Mock trials have since been held to see if the evidence was enough to prove the Rosenbergs guilt. The answer was proven to be no. Many people, despite the evidence, still believe the Rosenbergs are guilty. The Rosenbergs participation in the communist party, their convictions of espionage, and working for the Soviet Union were all events that led up to their demise. So, were the Rosenbergs really innocence
. The Venona project was a military investigation decoding Soviet cables going in and out the United States. These cables revealed hundreds of citizens and immigrants all on American soil that passed very confidential information to Soviet intelligence. (Citation here) This alarming discovery of spies and the success of them gathering information showed the Soviet Union and communisms ability to influence and control. It was espionage that led to the trails of Julius and Ethal Rosenburg. The Rosenburg were American citizens indited, convicted, and executed for passing confidential information to Soviet officials, which aided them in the duplication of nuclear weapons specifically the atomic bomb. Had the Soviet Union not gained access to such a vital piece of information, the pivoting point of psychological fear to actual physical fear spiraling a world wind of cause and effects around the world, then perhaps the fear its self would not have grown to such status. The Soviet Union’s espionage was a war on American soil, fought secretly to dismantle the super power of the United States.
There were no trials for those who were accused. Everybody simply ignored this. This was simple and clear violation of the constitution and its amendments. This situation had lots of similarities with the Salem witch trials because in both cases none of those accused had a fair trial or a chance to get out of the situation they were in. In both situations most of the time the accused got hanged.
The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...
similarity to the Salem witch trials. The McCarthy hearings are trials in which Senator Joe McCarthy accuses government employees of being Communists. He exaggerates and exploits the evidence and ruins many reputations just as the girls do in the Salem witch trials. The accused, in both cases, are used as scapegoats for society’s problems and the only way to escape direct punishment is to admit to guilt.
In this paper I am going to talk about the relations between the Salem witch trials and the Cold War. Covering this with evidence and facts about the theme. I think that this is a fair comparison and is very interesting what they have in common.
The hostile interrogation of numerous innocent people occurs during both time periods. During the McCarthy trials, the inquisitors attempt to use slippery tactics to implicate...
The United States was in a state of scare when they feared that communist agents would come and try to destroy our government system. An example of this scare was the Cold war. During the cold war the U.S. supported the anti-communist group while the Soviet Union favored the communist party. Many people who still supported the communist party still lived in the U.S. When the U.S. joined the Cold war, trying to rid the communist party from Europe and Asia, the U.S. were afraid that the people living in the United States that still supported communism were spies that would give intel back to the Soviet Union to try to destroy their government. If anybody was a suspected communist, if somebody just didn’t like somebody, or if they were even greedy they could accuse the person of communism and the person would be thrown in the penitentiary, thus, starting the second red scare.
McCarthyism, became a term that referred to Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin and the ruthless tactics he employed and institutionalized while seeking to destroy the threat of Communism to the United States government and society between 1950 and 1954. Fears of communism and self-promotion were utilized by McCarthy to promote himself as a politician end protector of the American way of life. Generally, McCarthyism became synonymous with the Medieval Witch Hunts and trials in that unfair prosecutions were based on fears and rumors. Both, McCarthyism and witch hunts were products of generally unfavorable times. Similarly, testimony and confessions were often forced by threat and coercion. Seemingly plausible accusations containing innuendo
The Rosenberg Case is still a controversial topic today. With the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American values such as liberty and tolerance were relegated into the background. With ambiguous evidence, their sentence is viewed as neither legally nor historically defensible. It is the product of the era that the trial took place in, which was ruled by Cold War sentiment, Red Scare and McCarthyism. The case sparked a lot of debate and protest abroad, but the Rosenbergs were nevertheless executed. It remains and will ever remain ambiguous if they were actually Soviet spies, to what extent the information they might have leaked would have been of use to the Soviet Union, and if their executions were justified. But in the McCarthy-era, their executions functioned perfectly for fueling the Red Scare and strengthening the Cold War environment.
FOR ALMOST fifty years, the words "McCarthy" and "McCarthyism" have stood for a shameful period in American political history. During this period, thousands of people lost their jobs and hundreds were sent to prison. The U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Communist Party (CP) members, as Russian spies. All of these people were victims of McCarthyism, the witch-hunt during the 1940s and 1950s against Communists and other leftists, trade unionists and civil rights activists, intellectuals and artists. Named for the witch-hunt's most zealous prosecutor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic Communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anticommunist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anticommunist crusade...used all the power of the state to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.[1]
The Soviet Union and the United States served as Allies during World War II. At the end of the war however each side wanted to deal with the aftermath differently. The United States was in favor of a peaceful and cooperative relationship with Germany and their Allies. The Soviet Union wanted revenge on the crimes and atrocities that were committed against them. The United States wanted to push democracy in Eastern Europe yet the Soviets countered this by saying the United States was hypocritical, since at that time the United States supported the Latin countries that were governed by dictatorships. The Soviets were under the impression that this was an effort to boost the UNITED STATES economy.
On March 29, after a much publicized court case, the couple were found guilty and sentenced to be executed in the week of May 21, and their accused co-conspirator, Sobell, got 30 years in jail because he was not explicitly connected to the atom bomb. Many people were against this decision and the president tried to justify such rash actions: "The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose death may be directly attributable to what these spies have done." After many failed appeals, Julius and Ethel were electrocuted minutes apart on June 19, 1953. Some of Julius' last words were, ".Never let them change the truth of our innocence." There were many illogical and contradicting statements in the testimonies, especially in Ethel Rosenberg's brother, David Greenglass. David worked for the US Army and for a time in a place where there was work on atomic energy.
The Holocaust had lasting effects on the relationship between the individual and society. Society put individual Nazis on trial for the actions they took in the Holocaust during World War II. The main trial was the Nuremberg trial and there were other subsequent trials as well. These trials were essential in showing the concern that justice and fairness should prevail for the victims. Therefore, the trials that took place after the Holocaust, especially at Nuremberg, involve and impact society as well as the lives of many people.
Following World War II, war trials convicted the criminals of their crimes. There were hundreds of trials that took place to punish the Nazi criminals. According to UnitedStatesHolocaustMemorialMuseum.org, “On December 17, 1942, the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union issued the first joint declaration officially noting the mass murder of European Jews and resolving to prosecute those responsible for crimes against civilian populations.” The United Nations War Crimes Commission would be in charge of the trials. These trials took place all over Europe.Many of them were in Germany and were held by the country that was occupying Germany after the war. According to UnitedStatesHolocaustMemorialMuseum.org, “The IMT defined crimes against humanity as “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation.” Most of the trials were with lower-level officials, and most of the first information we knew about concentration camps came from evidence and eyewitness accounts from these trials. Some of the specific trials were the Nuremberg trials, the Doctors trials, and the Auschwitz trials.
After World War II there was a strong anti-communist movement in America for decades prior to the 1950s. Nuclear weapons also sent a shot of distrust and fear between America and Russia. Information about nuclear weapons was very limited to the public. There are some facts, details, and reasons on why did this war happen, effects of the Cold War, and how society reacted to the War.