Germany has gone from a great European power to a defeated power more than once. Right now, it is regarded as an important, well-liked, well-respected nation. It has great industrial strength and a powerful economy, and it dominates European politics. Yet most people still overlook its true power and ambition!
The most recent example of Germany exercising its full power was the military and society that Adolf Hitler led in World War ii and the Holocaust. Even before that war ended and the world discovered the full horror of what Germany had done, its leaders planned how it would rise again!
Near the end of World War ii, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and United States President Franklin Roosevelt stated, “It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and Nazism and to ensure Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world.” Yet at the same time, some German elites were plotting to preserve the empire underground
America let Germany rebuild almost immediately and let it “denazify” itself just two years after the war. Even in the 1960s, the Bundesbank was led by people who were Nazis. But decades later, people still remembered what German power had done to the world. Even with the nuclear Soviet Union threatening the West, people feared Germany.
West German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss was the strongest politician in Europe. He pushed strongly for European unification. But he said in a meeting with Herbert W. Armstrong that Germany would be willing to completely renounce national sovereignty to appease those who feared what a united Europe could do if German militarism returned. He proposed that no German would be president, prime minister, defense minister or foreign minister for the rest of the 20th century. However, he also knew that it would take years for Germany to become powerful.
People thought that uniting Europe with Germany would work as long as Germany did not become strong.
Bernard Connolly worked inside the European financial system. In 1995, he wrote a book to expose “the doubletalk surrounding the efforts of politicians, bankers and bureaucrats to force Europe into a crippling monetary straightjacket” through the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the push for monetary union. He titled his book The Rotten Heart of Europe. Why? Because it was a “European cloak for German ambition.”
A European cloak for German ambition! It’s a Trojan horse in Europe!
But now the 20th century is over. Germany is reunited, and it has moved its capital back to Berlin. Germany is not only a great economic power, it is also becoming an increasingly assertive diplomatic and even military power. In fact, it is leading the armies of other European nations (article, page 15). Its Luftwaffe pilots have again flown in combat as part of nato (bombing the Serbs, who had fought the Nazis) and had waged war in Afghanistan. It has won the struggle with France to dominate Europe, and now France, its victim in two world wars, strongly supports Germany and its efforts for European unification.
Germany has the largest gross domestic product in Europe ($4.3 trillion). It uses this economic power to dictate terms to other nations, like it did with Greece and Cyprus when those nations needed financial rescue.
It has allowed its military to be far less powerful than it would normally be, spending slightly less than France. But last year, it pledged to raise military spending to 2 percent of its gdp and also set aside a special new military fund of €100 billion ($108.5 billion) to purchase advanced American F-35 fighter jets to carry the nuclear bombs that America gave it! It also produces weapons through more than 200 firms, including Rheinmetall, Heckler & Koch, ThyssenKrupp and the multinational European conglomerate Airbus.
Bible prophecy warns us that our “lovers” will betray us! (Ezekiel 16:33). Germany will probably use those same bombs to attack America.
Germany is one of the top five weapons exporters in the world, and it uses this power as part of its foreign policy. It has sold billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other nations. It has also deployed troops in several African countries and had more than 5,000 personnel in Afghanistan at the peak of the war. German troops are also stationed in Turkey, Lebanon and the Balkans (in Kosovo).
We are now seeing the emergence of the “ten kings” military empire prophesied in Revelation 17. The Bible prophesies that Germany, and a German strongman, will rule this empire!
The German people trace back to the ancient Assyrians, an extremely warlike people. God says that the modern Assyrians will make war on a scale unlike anything ever seen before!