Born in 1864, the son of a poor Austrian railroad official and one of 14 children.

Attended Lemberg Cadet School, a military academy and graduated in 1882. Received a commission in the Austrian Army, noted for his abilities with different languages. In 1889, was assigned to serve as a military observer, accompanying the Russian Army. Made a number of friendship and contacts among the Russians.

Was continually promoted until he reached the rank of Colonel. At this point was placed in the Austrian Military Counterintelligence Corps. In 1900, was named the head of the Kundschaftsstelle, the Austrian espionage and counter-espionage service. He immediately set to work modernizing the service, implementing new technologies as well as new methods for obtaining intelligence. Within his office, he often collected information on his visitors, obtaining their fingerprints by way of a special powder on the arms of their chair. He also photographed and recorded the conversations of visitors to his office. Introduced a new method of interrogation, where he shined lights directly in a suspect's eye while questioning him - this he called the "third degree."

Ethel Rosenberg's brother David Greenglass was involved in the research taking place in Los Alamos, New Mexico on the atomic bomb. Code-named "the Manhattan Project", the work involved many of the most respected scientific minds in the world. One of the people involved was Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant physicist from sent over from England.

Julius Rosenberg had begun working as an organizer and recruiter of spies and sought help from Greenglass. He convinced David's wife, Ruth Greenglass to visit him in New Mexico and obtain classified secrets about the atomic bomb from her husband, explaining that the information would be passed on to the Soviet Union so that the United States ally would be in a position to better defend itself against Nazi Germany. Ruth returned from her visit with names of scientists involved in the Manhattan Project, locations of test sites and descriptions of different experiments being conducted. She passed this information to the Rosenbergs.

In January 1945, while on leave from New Mexico, Greenglass met with Julius and Ethel. He had been a member of the Communist Party for several years already, persuaded to join by his sister Ethel. Emphasizing the importance of his contributions, Julius took a box of Jell-O and tore it in half marking each half in a particular manner. He gave one half to David Greenglass and told him that a new Soviet contact would be arranged for him, recognizable because the contact would possess the other half of the box.

In June 1945, David was approached by Harry Gold, a Soviet agent who was also gathering information at the time from Klaus Fuchs. Gold showed Greenglass the other half of the Jell-O box as his identification. Greenglass gave Gold the documents that he had procured and Gold, in exchange, gave Greenglass $500.00.

In September 1945, Greenglass traveled to New York and met with the Rosenbergs. Here, he gave a detailed description of the Uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the Plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki. In 1945, Julius Rosenberg was dismissed from his position at the U.S. Signal Corps, based in large part, because his loud, pro-Soviet stance had placed him under suspicion of being a Communist.

Tweet