AI Summary
5 min readIn the summer of 1944, David Greenglass, a young machinist with a boyhood fascination for science, arrived in the mountains of New Mexico to work on a project so secret that even its name was classified. He was joining the Manhattan Project. Back in New York, his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg, had already been passing information to Soviet intelligence for nearly two years. When Julius learned from David’s wife, Ruth, that David was working on something big out west, he saw an opportunity. Over the next several months, Julius would recruit his own family into a spy ring that would eventually become the most infamous espionage case in American history—a case FBI director J. Edgar Hoover would call "the case of the century."
The Making of a Communist Family
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:20) **The FBI Closes In** - Julius Rosenberg, a Soviet spy, realizes he's being watched as he visits his brother-in-law and fellow spy, David Greenglass.
- 2 (05:48) **The Case of the Century** - The episode sets up the historical stakes of the Rosenberg case, framing it as a story of competing loyalties during the Red Scare.
- 3 (07:13) **Young David Greenglass and His Sister Ethel** - A childhood scene introduces David's fascination with science and his deep bond with his older sister, Ethel.
- 4 (10:08) **Ethel's Radicalization** - Ethel's experience in the labor movement during the Great Depression transforms her into a passionate communist.
- 5 (11:05) **The Meeting of Ethel and Julius** - Julius Rosenberg charms Ethel after a disastrous performance, and they discover a shared political worldview.
- 6 (13:47) **Julius Recruits David** - Julius and Ethel convert David to communism, and Julius marries into the family, setting the stage for future recruitment.
- 7 (15:00) **Julius Joins the Army Signal Corps** - Julius gets a government job as an engineer, but his political activities soon draw suspicion.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
During World War II, New York communist Julius Rosenberg begins spying for Soviet intelligence and recruiting other Americans to join him. But when his wife’s brother joins the Manhattan Project, Julius targets him as a valuable new recruit and inadvertently sets the stage for the ultimate betrayal.
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