America in the Depression

In the book The Haunted Wood, co-authors Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev give a panoramic view of one particular epoch in American History, the Cold War. Essentially, this book claims to reveal much that is stunning and revealing about the overt and covert conflicts that divided the United States and the Soviet Union in a game of global domination, that, on the surface pitted two great economic theories Communism and Capitalism. Whether the book actually achieves its purpose is not within the scope of this paper.

What is within the scope is to focus on one event from the era of the Cold War and see just how that impacted the United States. That event is the espionage accusation, trial, sentencing, and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenberg case is a cause celebre, and perhaps one of the most controversial trials in United States history.

With the possible exception of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, no single trial has engendered so much debate, has aroused such passion, and has produced so many articles, books, and television shows as the Rosenberg trial. There have been books and documentaries and movies about the husband and wife's arrest, their time in jail while awaiting trial, and the actions of the couple during their trial, and the publicity surrounding their execution. Add Anti-Semitism and suspected government fraud and collusion, and the trial takes on all of the aspects of

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munist Legacy was uncovered, the United States was just recovering from the impact of World War II, and the uneasy and tenuous alliance with the Russians was now strained. The facade of cooperation between the two countries disappeared. The Soviets were afraid the US would use the Atomic Bomb to dominate the world, while the US was frightened that the world would become Communist as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and China fell to the Communists. Challenges Summarizing the challenges presented by this confluence of events is, in itself, a challenge. The United States government needed an event to mobilize the nation to the threat of Communism. It saw in the Rosenbergs the perfect symbol, a husband and wife who looked just like the people next door. No one looking at Ethel and Julius would ever guess what evil villains they were. The United States Justice Department was challenged by the very nature of the judicial system to build a provable case. Thus far, all it had were accusations of a brother against a sister, hardly enough to go to trial with, given the ironclad requirements of evidentiary proof. The FBI was challenged with the task of digging up sufficient dirt to nail the Rosenberg's, a
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Approximate Word count = 2381
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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