Although the Cold War did not officially begin until after the Second World War concluded, the fact of the matter is that the United States and Soviet Union had been vicious enemies long before that conflict began. That reality was defined by the opposition that Washington had to the Marxist-Leninists who assumed power in the middle of the First World War—with the United States even deploying troops to northern Russia to help the pro-tsarist forces in the Russian Civil War. Within its own borders, the US government went on an anti-communist spree in the form of the “Palmer Raids” during the late 1910s and early 1920s.

Even as the Second World War began, the Americans were understandably suspicious of the Soviets. Remember, initially in the war, Moscow was in an alliance with Hitler’s Germany. The two nations conquered Poland together, for instance. 

Once Adolf Hitler turned on the Soviets, Joseph Stalin, the leader of the USSR, needed to find new allies. Six months later, when the United States entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he found the Americans. But the alliance was always one of convenience only. The old rivalries and doubts persisted. Indeed, from the Soviet side, the relationship was far more parasitic than it has commonly been remembered.

The Soviet Union Stole Aircraft Designs from the Americans

One concrete example of the parasitic relationship that Stalin had with the Americans was in the way that the Soviets exploited their alliance with the United States to engage in wanton industrial theft. It is well-known today that the Soviet Union had thoroughly penetrated the American nuclear weapons program, with spies like Klaus Fuchs passing on information to Moscow—leading the Soviets to conduct their first successful nuclear test in 1949, only four years after the Americans.

But the Soviets stole many other technologies,........

© The National Interest