OCIAL stratification and its related concepts, such as social mobility, present a densely interwoven mass of major and minor distinctions, particularly when application to analysis of a specific society at a given time is concerned. The untangling of these distinctions could be in highest degree useful, for advances in general sociological theory depend on just such painstaking work, but purpose of present paper does not permit sustained attention to this task.' Consequently, only rough working distinctions will be made, and virtually all of these will be made implicitly rather than explicitly. Rule-of-thumb procedure of this kind is a defect, not a virtue; only controlling purpose of presentation provides even partial justification. The purpose is preliminary description and fragmentary analysis of a set of phenomena that in its complexity, speed of change, and sheer dimensions confronts us with a range of scientific problems of literally unprecedented scope. The shifts in social stratification, intended and unintended, utterly dwarf, considering time interval during which they have occurred and are occurring, anything previously known in human history. To use rubber-stamp phrase, merely scratch surface, in relation to present paper is not only to be trite but also to be oppressively obvious, as is also statement that more detailed presentation in subsequent papers is called for. In referring later to the greatest purge of a body politic, the greatest postwar mass transfer of population, and the greatest destruction in human history, three factors affecting social stratification in today's Germany at almost every point are singled out. Before proceeding with discussion of social stratification as such, therefore, it behooves us to look at gross dimensions of these factors.