Image: Shutterstock.com | Above: A stock photo of the Duga antenna complex, former Soviet military radar system from the Cold War. Located in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, Ukraine.
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The sentence for betrayal in the Cold War between the US and the USSR was death. This shocking sentence for the husband and wife spies was symptomatic of the national hysteria. The key witness had been Ethel’s own brother, who said that the husband had induced him to steal atomic bomb secrets.
The couple were nobler, refusing to testify against their comrades. The jury found them guilty of espionage the week before and the judge sentenced them on this date to die by electrocution.