August 29, 1949: The Red Bomb

August 29, 1949, 75 years ago: The Soviet Union successfully test a device they call RDS-1, at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. The United States of American is no longer alone in possessing the atomic bomb. The "Reds" have it now, too.

It was similar to the "Fat Man" bomb that the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki, Japan: A plutonium-based implosion type weapon with an explosive yield equivalent to 22 kilotons of TNT. They had received intelligence on Fat Man thanks to Julius Rosenberg, who had been a U.S. Army engineer. He and his wife Ethel had been couriers for the Communist Party, and would be convicted of treason in 1951 and executed for it in 1953.

The Soviets called it "Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Spetsialnyi," or "Special Jet Engine." "RDS" also worked as "Reaktivnyi Dvigatel Stalina," meaning "Stalin's Jet Engine"; or "Rossiya Delayet Sama," meaning "Russia does it herself." (In contrast with Germany and many other countries calling themselves a "Fatherland," Russia has always been known as a "Motherland," or as "Mother Russia.")

Now, the Soviet Union had not just the world's 2nd-biggest military force, it had the bomb. If the Cold War was not yet well and truly on, it was now.

There are those who say that the Soviet Union was a more evil regime than Nazi Germany. The Soviets had the bomb for 42 years before their regime collapsed, and they never used it. If Hitler had the bomb, would he have hesitated to use it on Moscow? On London? If he could have loaded one onto a plane aboard their only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, and sent a bomb to New York or Washington, would he have ordered it? It was Hitler. Of course he would have.

But he never got close. Partly because the Allies took action, and partly because Hitler chased his own best scientists into the arms of the Allies. 

June 19, 1953: Julius & Ethel Rosenberg Are Executed

June 19, 1953, 70 years ago: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, husband and wife, Americans convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union, are executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, Westchester County, New York. Julius was 35 years old, Ethel was 37.

They were the 1st American civilians to be executed for treason during peacetime. The Korean War was in its final days, and North Korea was receiving aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from China. But there was not then a declaration of war between America and any nation.

Millions of people around the world wanted to believe that they were innocent. Many others believed that, even if they were guilty, they should not receive the death penalty. But many others believed that spying for the Communists deserved the death penalty. Some people suspected that the desire to believe them guilty, and worthy of execution, was motivated by anti-Semitism.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, declassified documents showed that Julius was a courier for American atomic energy secrets, and Ethel was a recruiter, including of her brother, David Greenglass, who ratted his sister and his brother-in-law out to save himself from "the chair." The real villain of the story, Greenglass served nearly 10 years in prison, and lived until 2014.

The Rosenbergs had 2 sons, left orphans. They were adopted by Abel Meeropol, a songwriter who had written Billie Holiday's anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit" and Frank Sinatra's anti-bigotry song "The House I Live In." Both sons are still alive, and retired from careers as college professors: Michael Meeropol, age 80, economics; Robert Meeropol, 76, anthropology. Each of the brothers has 2 children.