Two world wars plus local conflicts produced unprecedented mass homelessness and rootlessness.

Evidence

TWO WORLD WARS in one generation, separated by an uninterrupted chain of local wars and revolutions, followed by no peace treaty for the vanquished and no respite for the victor, have ended in the anticipation of a third World War between the two remaining world powers. This moment of anticipation is like the calm that settles after all hopes have died. We no longer hope for an eventual restoration of the old world order with all its traditions, or for the reintegration of the masses of Ave continents who have been thrown into a chaos produced by the violence of wars and revolutions and the growing decay of all that has still been spared. Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena—homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 5

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s core diagnostic pairing — homelessness and rootlessness — named as the twin defining phenomena of the era, a vocabulary item to carry forward.
• XREF: connects to: Fourteen to fifteen million Germans were made homeless by wartime destruction. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 557