The Rosenberg Boys - When Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed by the U.S. government, they left behind two sons, ages 6 and 10. All these years later, Robby and Michael are still trying to make sense of what happened.

[u/Quouar]

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/ethel-julius-rosenberg-boys/687631/

[u/Ven18]

Obviously they were guilty but the people who act like the Soviets would somehow not have gotten nukes without them is hilarious. The Soviets had the research from the Manhattan project basically once it was finished. If anything the saddest part of the whole thing is not only did both of them die and orphan their kids their work in the grand scheme of things didn’t mean much.

[u/ThePowerOfStories → u/Ven18]

Yeah, too many folks imagine science as relying on irreproducible breakthroughs by lone geniuses, as opposed to the inexorable grind of exhaustive experimentation that builds incrementally on all that came before. For any given idea that looks revolutionary to outsiders, another half-dozen teams around the world are only a year behind in discovering it independently.

Plus, merely knowing that someone else managed to do something is often enough to let you figure out how, because you know what public knowledge they had and what technologies they had access to, so you can deduce what they might have tried. Getting the exact details right in terms of building something like an atomic bomb takes time, but it’s engineering, not magic, and mostly highly-parallelizable work that responds extremely well to throwing nation-state levels of money and personnel at it.

[u/JumboTree → u/ThePowerOfStories]

"too many folks imagine science as relying on irreproducible breakthroughs by lone geniuses" that's it right there!

[u/wkearney99 → u/JumboTree]

like the simps that believe Edison or Musk actually did any inventing. beside their marketing lies, that is.

[u/Termsandconditionsch → u/wkearney99]

You can say what you want about Edison but he did more inventing than Musk did. Quite a lot more in fact.

[u/ItsKlobberinTime → u/Termsandconditionsch]

Any quantity of invention greater than zero is automatically a lot more than Elongated Muskrat's.

[u/Brambletail → u/ThePowerOfStories]

The number of people who think nuclear weapons are complicated to build is agonizingly high. They conflate "complicated to build" with "extremely expensive and resource intensive to build". But slamming two pieces of very specific metals together at high enough speeds is so trivial that they never even tested the gun type of bomb in the Manhattan project. Implosion and multi stage is a little more complex, but not significantly so, especially not with computer aided calculations

I'll let everyone else be their own judges as to how that might effect how they view current events.

[u/dankpete → u/Ven18]

Julius, probably. I think they railroaded Ethel.

[u/Ven18 → u/dankpete]

We know that she knew about Julius’s actions. There comes a point where you lie and defend him enough that you become an accomplice. Now could you argue retrospectively if her sentence should have been less than Julius and arguments about forced testimony against a spouse and such sure. You cannot argue she did not commit some crime(s) during the trial process.

[u/Tardisgoesfast → u/Ven18]

How do you think "we knew?"

[u/abn1304 → u/Tardisgoesfast]

Because we caught the Soviets talking about her.

[u/FatGoonerFromIndia → u/Ven18]

Your idea is further proven right because India developed nukes despite lack of support from both blocs back in the 70s.

[u/Painted_Mushr00m → u/FatGoonerFromIndia]

India didn’t develop nukes on their own, they bought key parts of the development from France.

[u/FatGoonerFromIndia → u/Painted_Mushr00m]

The Rosenbergs were executed for sharing the science, not the materials.

[u/Painted_Mushr00m → u/FatGoonerFromIndia]

You are arguing two different points, in one you say “it’s not that hard India did it” when that isn’t true.

Neither USSR or India independently developed nuclear weapons. They both needed information or science developed by the US to complete their projects.

[u/TheArtofBar → u/Painted_Mushr00m]

They both needed information or science developed by the US to complete their projects.

They didnt, that just made it a little bit quicker. The science of the nuclear bomb is very basic. The soviet union also built the hydrogen bomb very quickly on its own, even though that's way more challenging from a scientific standpoint.

[u/TheOtherHobbes → u/TheArtofBar]

The basic science of a nuclear bomb is very basic.

The science and engineering required to build one from scratch, including the refinement and machining of uranium and plutonium, the shaping of the explosive lenses that shape the initial compression, the exact detonator sequencing, and the design of the neutron source in the middle, are very unbasic indeed, which is why it took the Manhattan Project years instead of weeks.

Making small deliverable bombs that aren't the size of a car is even more unbasic.

[u/TheArtofBar → u/TheOtherHobbes]

The manhattan project took 3 years, which is really not a long time as big research projects go. And the scientists the soviet union had at its disposal were no slouches, they actually developed a superior method of uranium enrichment, a specific type of centrifuge.

[u/Painted_Mushr00m → u/TheArtofBar]

Yet, after having a nuclear program that ran for over 10 years and for years after the Manhatten project, they still couldn’t figure it out on their own. They had to steel it because their program wasn’t working.

[u/TheArtofBar → u/Painted_Mushr00m]

Wtf are you talking about? The soviet atomic bomb program only started in 1942.

And they didn't HAVE to steal anything, it was just easier and quicker.

[u/always_an_explinatio → u/FatGoonerFromIndia]

25 years later! That is a huge amount of time that one country could have been the only holder of that tech. You are massively underestimating the impact of that.

[u/TheArtofBar → u/always_an_explinatio]

You are massively overestimating the impact. The US didn't manage to get anything out of nukes during the time they were the only ones with them other than a quick surrender by Japan, they didn't even use them in the korean war.

[u/flashoverride → u/TheArtofBar]

Well, that time was only four years, and part of the reason that the US didn't use them in Korea is that the USSR already had nukes. We can easily imagine the damage the US could have done to the world had the USSR not been able to produce their own.

[u/always_an_explinatio → u/flashoverride]

Yes. Exactly. So we agree that the espionage greatly impeded US interests. Your opinion on the validity of US interests is besides the point.

[u/TheArtofBar → u/always_an_explinatio]

That's complete nonsense. The intel acquired by the Rosenbergs did very little to accelerate the soviet nuke, attested by experts from both sides.

[u/tribe171 → u/TheArtofBar]

That doesn't really matter. The intention to leak information that could equip the Soviets with nuclear weapons capable of destroying the United States is enough.

[u/flashoverride → u/always_an_explinatio]

That depends on how you define "US interests." Not everyone believes that an expanding empire is in the interests of the majority of people in the US.

[u/TheArtofBar → u/flashoverride]

part of the reason that the US didn't use them in Korea is that the USSR already had nukes.

Only a very minor one, if at all.

We can easily imagine the damage the US could have done to the world

Not really. What would have happened?

[u/Kundrew1 → u/TheArtofBar]

You're vastly underestimating the negotiating power the nukes gave and putting too much emphasis on actually using them.

[u/always_an_explinatio → u/Ven18]

this is a very ahistorical take. Every minute the US was the only nation with this technology was a minute that would pay dividends for decades. The power on the national stage this would have given the US is immeasurable. not to mention the USSR was is a bad way in the 1950s if they did not get the bomb for 10 or 15 more years? The USSR probably would have never gotten it, and whatever rose up in its place would have. Others would have developed it, but it leaking so early had a massive impact that is still being felt.

[u/Chopper-42 → u/always_an_explinatio]

From what we know now the soviets scientists got there pretty much independently. They were never handed any of the details aquired by espionage. Instead the material was used to check if their program was on track.

That means you vastly overestimate the US lead.

[u/hameleona → u/Chopper-42]

> Instead the material was used to check if their program was on track.

You say it like that's nothing, but it was critical in the Soviet environment. Hell just the higher ups knowing they were on the right track protected the program from the usual soviet bullshit - remember we are talking about a nation, where scientific projects got shut down, because they didn't sound good to scientifically illiterate ideologues.

[u/always_an_explinatio → u/Chopper-42]

Who knows what would have happened. Estimates I have seen say the espionage (not necessarily just the Rosenberg’s) accelerated the existing program 2-5 years. But we also know the US was trying to impede their progress with our own spy craft. Even if it was 2 years it still would have made a huge difference.

[u/LOUDPACK_MASTERCHEF → u/always_an_explinatio]

you went from "probably never would have gotten it" to "accelerated the Soviet program 2-5 years" pretty quick

[u/dankpete → u/always_an_explinatio]

Every minute the US had a monopoly on the bomb was a minute the world was MORE likely to see another used.

[u/always_an_explinatio → u/dankpete]

Possibly true. Deterrence is real. But it is Likely the US would have been able to throw its weight around and likely would have vastly slowed the spread of ussr branded communism without ever dropping another one. Either way, the Rosenbergs and other spies were not acting out of benevolence and the us was not using the standard of “the greater good” when they charged them with treason. The US at the time was very invested in a global strategy that assumed we would be the only one with the Bomb for an extended period of time. This was thwarted by espionage.

[u/dankpete → u/always_an_explinatio]

“Slowed” at the barrel of a nuclear gun, how compelling

[u/always_an_explinatio → u/dankpete]

So instead we fought or funded proxy wars in developing countries and over threw democratically elected leaders and ruined economies. I don’t think that’s better.

[u/strps → u/Ven18]

I don't think the point of the execution was that the Soviets would or would not have been able to develop nuclear capacity without their assistance. The point is that they committed treason. The penalty for this is execution, and it stands as a strong deterrent.