einstein

The Rosenbergs
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
RED SCARE
1951–1954
With J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1947
The rush to build the H-Bomb, rising anticommunist fervor, and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s increasingly untethered security investigations
unnerved Einstein. The atmosphere reminded him of the rising Nazism and anti-Semitism of the 1930s. “The German calamity of years ago
repeats itself,” he lamented to the queen mother of Belgium in early 1951. “People acquiesce without resistance and align themselves with the
forces for evil.” 1
He tried to maintain a middle ground between those who were reflexively anti-American and those who were reflexively anti-Soviet. On the one
hand, he rebuked his collaborator Leopold Infeld, who wanted him to support statements by the World Peace Council, which Einstein rightly
suspected was Soviet-influenced. “In my view they are more or less propaganda,” he said. He did the same to a group of Russian students who
pressed him to join a protest against what they alleged was America’s use of biological weapons during the Korean War. “You cannot expect me to
protest against incidents which possibly, and very probably, have never taken place,” he replied. 2
On the other hand, Einstein refrained from signing a petition circulated by Sidney Hook denouncing the perfidy of those who made such charges
against America. He was enamored of neither extreme. As he put it, “Every reasonable person must strive to promote moderation and a more
objective judgment.” 3
In what he presumed would be a quiet effort at promoting such moderation, Einstein wrote a private letter asking that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,
who had been convicted of turning over atomic secrets to the Soviets, be spared the death penalty. He had avoided making any statements about
the case, which had divided the nation with a frenzy seldom seen before the advent of the cable-TV age. Instead, he sent the letter to the judge,
Irving Kaufman, with a promise not to publicize it. Einstein did not contend that the Rosenbergs were innocent. He merely argued that a death
penalty was too harsh in a case where the facts were murky and the outcome was driven more by popular hysteria than objectivity. 4
In a reflection of the tenor of the time, Judge Kaufman took the private letter and turned it over to the FBI. Not only was it put into Einstein’s file, but
it was investigated to see if it could be construed as disloyalty. After three months, a report was sent to Hoover saying no further incriminating
evidence had been found, but the letter remained in the file. 5
When Judge Kaufman went ahead and imposed a death penalty, Einstein wrote to President Harry Truman, who was about to leave office, to
ask him to commute the sentence. He drafted the letter first in German and then in English on the back of a piece of scrap paper that he had filled
with a variety of equations that apparently, given how they trail off, led to nothing. 6 Truman bucked the decision to incoming President Eisenhower,
who allowed the executions to proceed.
Einstein’s letter to Truman was released publicly, and the New York Times ran a front-page story headlined “Einstein Supports Rosenberg
Appeal.” 7 More than a hundred angry letters swept in from across the nation. “You need some common sense plus some appreciation for what
America has given you,” wrote Marian Rawles of Portsmouth, Virginia. “You place the Jew first and the United States second,” said Charles
Williams of White Plains, New York. From Corporal Homer Greene, serving in Korea: “You evidently like to see our GI’s killed. Go to Russia or back
where you came from, because I don’t like Americans like you living off this country and making un-American statements.” 8
There were not as many positive letters, but Einstein did have a pleasant exchange with the liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas,
who had unsuccessfully tried to stop the executions.“You have struggled so devotedly for the creation of a healthy public opinion in our troubled
time,” Einstein wrote in a note of appreciation. Douglas sent back a handwritten reply: “You have paid me a tribute which brightens the burdens of
this dark hour—a tribute I will always cherish.” 9
Many of the critical letters asked Einstein why he was willing to speak out for the Rosenbergs but not for the nine Jewish doctors whom Stalin had
put on trial as part of an alleged Zionist conspiracy to murder Russian leaders. Among those who publicly challenged what they saw as Einstein’s
double standard were the publisher of the New York Post and the editor of the New Leader. 10
Einstein agreed that the Russian actions should be denounced. “The perversion of justice which manifests itself in all the official trials staged by
the Russian government deserves unconditional condemnation,” he wrote. He added that individual appeals to Stalin would probably not do much,
but perhaps a joint declaration from a group of scholars would help. So he got together with the chemistry Nobel laureate Harold Urey and others to
issue one. “Einstein and Urey Hit Reds’ Anti-Semitism,” the New York Times reported. 11 (After Stalin died a few weeks later, the doctors were