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Progressive cold drawing in eutectoid steels produces a preferentialorientation of the pearlitic micorstructure in the wire axis or drawing direction. Thisaffects the posterior behaviour of the steels under environmentally assisted cracking(EAC) conditions. The experimental results show that cold drawing induces strengthanisotropy in the steel, and thus the resistance to EAC is a directional property thatdepends on the angle in relation to the drawing direction. Therefore, an initialtransverse crack changes its propagation direction to approach that of the wire axis,thus producing mixed mode propagation, the deflection angle being an increasingfunction of the cold drawing degree. This experimental result may be explained bymicro-mechanical considerations on the basis of the lamellar microstructure of thesteels. A relationship is established between the microstructural angles and thedeflection angles of the macroscopic crack in EAC, thus providing a materials sciencetype relationship between the microstructure and the macroscopic crack paths.