Fear; the strife between the capitalist and communist governments resulted in this. The belief that freedom and the American way of life and capitalism would cease to exist and die under a communist takeover. There were specific and deliberate decisions that the U.S. made during WWII that caused tensions to rise between them and the Soviet Union, which began the Cold War. The media added to the flames of fear and misinformation to create a hatred of communism throughout the nation. The U.S. government also took it into its hands to launch a huge propaganda to raise the Cold War scare and keep ideology the same and uniform. All of this, of course, would have a huge affect on domestic and foreign policy and created a new set of beliefs and a way of life that was otherwise unimaginable and in some ways, unconstitutional.
It is 1945, Hitler is dead and Europe is in shambles and in need of major reparations. America is a young nation that is on the verge of becoming a dominant country. The U.S. is relatively unscathed and lost far fewer soldiers in the war then their enemies or their allies. By dropping the Atomic bomb, the U.S. has established itself as a world power. Truman caused relations with the Russians to worsen right away by submitting the Truman doctrine which "aided" Turkey and Greece by freeing them of communist rule, many more were killed. The Marshal plan came shortly afterwards ensuring American aid to reconstruct Europe, preventing communism at all costs. Having a division of Europe between the east and the west only gave a physical boundary to this cold war and meetings in Tehran and Yalta assured that this conflict of powers would ensure a battle of cultural development. In 1949, the United States organized an anticommunist treaty known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The American Society was affected by the Cold War in that the U.S. was trying to prove how great their life in this country was.