Heidegger blamed America and the USSR for a centuries-long planetary destruction.

Evidence

‘Devastation’ (Verwüstung) becomes the key word of their conversation. It turns out that they are not only referring to recent events, but to a devastation that has been eating at the earth for centuries and turning everything into a ‘desert’ — Wüste, a word etymologically linked to Verwüstung. It has made its greatest gains in a certain workers’ paradise (clearly the Soviet Union), and in a coldly calculating, technologically advanced rival land where ‘everything remains overseeable and arranged and accounted for so as to be useful’. This, of course, is the United States; like Sartre and other Europeans in this era, Heidegger found it natural to associate it with technology and mass production. At the end of the dialogue, the younger man says that, rather than trying futilely to ‘get over’ universal devastation on such a scale, the only thing to do is to wait. So there they remain, a Germanic Vladimir and Estragon, waiting in their haggard landscape. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 571

Categorization

• DEFINE: Verwüstung/Wüste etymology — devastation as desert-making — is a key concept in Heidegger’s late thought.
• XREF: The technological critique of America echoes Heidegger’s ‘Question Concerning Technology’; the ‘waiting’ ending resonates with both Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and the reader’s earlier engagement with silence and patience. — connects to: Heidegger framed national destiny as existential response to modernity’s crisis — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1307; Modern historiography’s hegemony rests on destroying history-poor societies. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 1017; Heidegger held that modern technology erodes intentionality itself, dissolving subject-object distinction — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 583

Broader Connections

• Heidegger framed national destiny as existential response to modernity’s crisis #expands (0.85) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1307
• Heidegger held that modern technology erodes intentionality itself, dissolving subject-object distinction #expands (0.78) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 583
• Modern historiography’s hegemony rests on destroying history-poor societies. #exemplifies (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 1017