Representing the US government during the earliest era of the United Nations, Warren Austin, who served the Truman administration, and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who was Eisenhower's ambassador, both attempted to navigate a delicate path in tumultuous time period marked by the beginning of the Cold War, the end of European imperialism, the McCarthyite scare in the United States, and the threat of atomic annihilation. Their success in doing so laid the groundwork for the victory of the West over the Soviet Union and ensure the United Nations would win crucial US support and avoid the fate of its predecessor, the League of Nations.