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Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option. In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People’s Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. The fight against subversion at home mirrored a growing concern with the Soviet threat abroad. As this anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and “loyalty oaths” became commonplace. Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. In such a hostile atmosphere, no single party was entirely to blame for the Cold War in fact, some historians believe it was inevitable. Meanwhile, the USSR came to resent what they perceived as American officials’ bellicose rhetoric, arms buildup and interventionist approach to international relations. Postwar Soviet expansionism in Eastern Europe fueled many Americans’ fears of a Russian plan to control the world. After the war ended, these grievances ripened into an overwhelming sense of mutual distrust and enmity. For their part, the Soviets resented the Americans’ decades-long refusal to treat the USSR as a legitimate part of the international community as well as their delayed entry into World War II, which resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Russians. Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical rule of his own country.
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However, the relationship between the two nations was a tense one. During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together as allies against the Axis powers.