[I_Love_My_Husband]

Ethel Rosenberg's own response was quite different: "the great democratic United States," she said, "is proposing the savage destruction of a small, unoffending Jewish family." When, on the eve of the execution, the United States marshal told her that her final appeal had been denied and the death sentence would be carried out in a matter of hours, she added: "the Rosenbergs will be the first victims of American fascism."

AEI link

Very dramatic. However, all's they had to do was confess...but they didn't. They made a decision together to be martyrs. They didn't have to be. In the process their sons suffered for their selfishness/stubbornness/committment to a faux phony idealistic cause called Communism.

[liberallarry]

However, all's they had to do was confess...

The government used Inquisition tactics. Why do you suppose we have a Fifth Amendment? Maybe they were guilty, maybe not. But you cannot use their confession...or lack of...as proof. It's criminal and primitive to do so.

In any case it was certain that the secret of the atomic bomb could not be kept after it's existance was revealed. Not a single scientist thought it could be. Technology of all kinds spreads like wildfire in the modern world.

[Doctor Stochastic]

There was a reason. The Rosenbergs (according the the books on Venona) were also running a spy ring stealing radar information. The Rosembergs allowed themselves to be executed to protect their people in these rings.