Many people know nothing about Lithuania; they couldn’t even identify it on a map. Almost no one is paying attention, but some crucial, consequential history is repeating itself before our eyes in this little East European country.

For the first time since World War ii, Germany has established a permanent foreign military base—and it did so in Lithuania. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attended the official inauguration ceremony on May 22. Merz and Germany’s 45th Armored Brigade were warmly celebrated by Lithuanians. President Gitanas Nausėda said he welcomed the German forces “with an open heart and sincere gratitude.”

The Lithuanians love having German troops back in their country. To them it means protection from the Russian threat.

Chancellor Merz responded, “We will not disappoint Lithuania.” “Germany stands by its responsibility today, tomorrow—for as long as it takes,” he said.

As notable as this is for Lithuania, it is also a big moment for Germany.

A New Era for Germany

“Germany’s decision to deploy a permanent force of 5,000 soldiers to Lithuania is extremely significant, because it signals the next phase of a new geopolitical era,” wrote George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures (May 27; emphasis mine throughout).

Why significant? Because although Germany is Europe’s largest economy and most powerful country, for decades it has been cautious about asserting itself militarily. You would expect as much, given its ignominious history in World War i and ii. But that caution is now vanishing.

“Germany’s decision to deploy troops in Europe—which has been welcomed by the [United States] as well as other European countries—violates its commitment to modest ambitions for European leadership,” Friedman wrote. “Put simply, the deployment to Lithuania could presage the reemergence of Germany as a geopolitical force” (ibid).

Germany is now a geopolitical force—again. Friedman says this is extremely significant. We are in a new era where the power is once again coming from Germany! How many people recognize this?

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“With Germany having thus created a concrete military commitment in Europe,” Friedman wrote, “the question now is whether the deployment is the first of many European actions or simply a solitary act.” Based on Bible prophecy, I can tell you this is no solitary act! The German military is going to expand to many other nations in Europe.

“But even if Germany’s was a solitary act, it is a critical shift in Europe,” he continued. “The country has been a pariah state, albeit to a decreasing extent since World War ii ….” It was a “pariah state” militarily because nato and other powers have kept it that way. But this is no longer the case.

This past spring, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, “Germany is ready to lead.”

We are dealing with a different Germany today than we have for several decades. It is rising up and has already become the strongest military power in Europe. When you look at what Bible prophecy says about this, it is not good news. In fact, it should cause great alarm!

Ten Kings

The Bible prophesies repeatedly that Europe will have 10 kings united within a single empire (e.g. Daniel 7:24; Revelation 17:12). Other prophecies, which we will look at, show that this European superstate will be ruled by Germany. Do we believe God? Do we even know God—or have we forsaken God? We have to examine ourselves.

You can expect Germany’s 45th Armored Brigade to stay in Lithuania permanently. Germany has ambitions to colonize other countries, and prophecy shows it will succeed. Soon, believe it or not, it will be even stronger than America.

We have warned our readers for decades that this would happen. Knowing those biblical prophecies, the late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in May 1953 that “10 powerful European nations will combine their forces.” In August 1978 he warned, “The Europeans are far more disturbed about their safety in relying on United States military power to protect them than Americans realize!” He saw even then that they don’t look to America like they had years before—and that is 20 times truer today!

“Europeans want their own united military power!” Mr. Armstrong continued. “They know that a political union of Europe would produce a third major world power, as strong as either the U.S. or the ussr—possibly stronger!”

In his May 1953 article, he wrote: “Germany is the economic and military heart of Europe. Without Germany such a federation of nations is impossible. Yet the other nations of Europe will not trust Germany or a German leader. Still, in spite of this, it is probable that none but a German can provide the dynamic, inspired leadership required to organize such a political military federation.”

In a 1980 radio broadcast, Mr. Armstrong said, “A human body cannot live without its heart. And the economic and the military body that is to rise up and to restore the Roman Empire—the thing that we least suspect here in the United States—it cannot rise up without its heart. And its heart is in Germany.”

Germany is Europe’s heart! And it now has the power over all of Europe—certainly economically, even militarily. They are far stronger than most people realize.

Germany’s permanent military deployment to Lithuania means that it is going to rule this country as it did in World War ii. This is the start of Germany doing the same thing again, only far worse.

History Prophesied to Repeat

When Chancellor Merz visited Lithuania, he said he was appreciative of the two nations’ friendship, “[E]specially in light of the suffering that National Socialist Germany imposed on Lithuania.”

Those few words recall a history that must be remembered. Lithuania experienced brutal occupation and the extermination of its Jewish population during that period.

In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and imposed Communist rule. The Catholic Church faced severe persecution as the Communists sought to eliminate religious influence, closing churches, imprisoning clergy and promoting atheism.

The situation shifted dramatically during World War ii. In June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, including Lithuania, as part of Operation Barbarossa. When the Nazis drove out the Soviet forces, many in Catholic regions initially viewed them as liberators from Soviet oppression.

However, the Nazis established a brutal regime under the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The German occupation brought severe repression, including the persecution and murder of Jews, with significant collaboration from local Lithuanians.

After Merz’s comment in Lithuania, German-Foreign-Policy.com wrote: “He failed to mention that large segments of the Lithuanian population had, in fact, collaborated with Nazi Germany and actively participated in the annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews, while the suffering was mainly inflicted on the Lithuanian Jews. To Merz and Pistorius, not a word about the Jewish victims was worth an utterance” (May 30).

They are celebrating being back there, but they won’t mention what they did to the Jews there. That history is despicable!

There were about 160,000 Jews in Lithuania before World War ii, comprising about 7 percent of the population. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says, “The Jews of Lithuania had their own distinct and highly developed Jewish culture, including a special dialect of the Yiddish language. Lithuanian Jewry played a profound role in many Jewish ideologies, including the Jewish workers’ movement, Zionism and rational religious thought.”

After the war began, Jewish refugees from German-occupied Poland flowed into Lithuania, raising that number to 250,000—10 percent of the population.

But then Germany came in and murdered them! Many Lithuanians joined the slaughter and “carried out violent riots against the Jews, both shortly before and immediately after the arrival of German forces” (ibid). Even elements of the Lithuanian Church collaborated with the Nazis, with some clergy supporting or participating in the killing.

The Holocaust in Lithuania was devastating, killing over 90 percent of the Jewish population.

Consider this history when you see Lithuania welcoming Germany back into the country!

Germans should be fiercely ashamed of the atrocities they committed. Now they are back in Lithuania and are celebrating it. They act like they know nothing about that history and avoid talking about it. But Bible prophecy says it is going to be like World War ii again—but even more despicable, hateful and cruel! We are about to see violence of all sorts, much of it against the Jews once again.

People ignore history and prophecy, but we are saying something about it. This world had better heed.

Encouraging Germany to Rearm

After World War ii, the victorious Allies swore to keep Germany unarmed forever. In February 1945, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt wrote: “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.”

Yes, Germany has routinely disturbed the peace of the world! And these statesmen determined to stop that forever. They solemnly stated it would be stopped.

What a failure that was! It didn’t happen that way at all. Mr. Armstrong explained how Germany’s Nazi leaders went underground, and how the industrialists planned—during the final months of World War ii—to restore the nation to power after their defeat. That is exactly what has happened, and so much of it was and is with the help of America and the West.

And now, we are doing more than simply abandoning that promise of keeping Germany disarmed—we are encouraging the opposite!

U.S. President Donald Trump keeps pushing Germany to rearm. It is as if he knows nothing about Germany’s history. World War ii ended only 80 years ago; that is rather recent history.

President Trump has been telling nato nations that the U.S. will no longer underwrite their security and that they must boost their military spending dramatically. And nato has agreed to do just that.

This has very concrete ramifications. nato’s new goal is for member states to spend 3.5 percent of their gross domestic product on their military and 1.5 percent on military infrastructure. Germany is already planning to do that.

In 2015, Germany spent 1.1 percent of its gdp, or $38.2 billion, on defense. Ten years later, it spent $97.7 billion, making it the second-largest spender in the alliance after the U.S. In a new budget unveiled on June 24, Germany plans to boost its current military spending, to $177 billion per year by 2029—well on the way to meeting nato’s new minimum. If the EU as a whole met this 3.5 percent minimum, its military spending would jump from $338 billion last year to $679 billion.

Pistorius said in June that Germany needs another 50,000 to 60,000 troops to meet this commitment. They have already created a new brigade for the Lithuania deployment.

As these details were being hammered out in preparation for a nato summit in June, the Trumpet’s Richard Palmer explained the main development: “NATO Just Agreed to Create a German Military Superpower”). “nato is establishing German dominance over Europe,” he wrote. “That’s quite the turnaround for an alliance set up, in the famous words of its first secretary general, to ‘keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’” (June 12).

Those men knew that Germany had to be kept down or we would have another world war! They were right—and that is exactly where we are headed today.

And Germany is going to start it, just as it did World War i and World War ii, and many wars before that. The Germans are a great people, but they have caused more wars than any other people in the world. Their history has been a history of warfare!

How remarkable, then, that everyone is urging them to arm themselves: Well, go on! We need you to be powerful and to help us in case Russia or China attacks us!

To drum up more recruits, Germany is changing its relationship with its military. On June 15, Germany held its first-ever Veterans’ Day, honoring active and former Bundeswehr personnel since its founding in 1955. They are returning to celebrating their army!

Bible prophecy tells us this is going to make Germany the greatest power ever.

God Is Full of Wrath

The book of Isaiah is primarily about the end time. Isaiah 10:5 quotes God making this extraordinary statement: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.” “Assyrian” is the name in biblical prophecy for the German people. God says He is going to use this people as the rod of His anger!

He continues, “I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets” (verse 6). “The people of my wrath” are the modern nations descended from ancient Israel—primarily the United States and Britain, as well as the Jewish state of Israel. (You can prove this in our book The United States and Britain in Prophecy; request a free copy.)

God doesn’t like what He sees in these nations; He calls them hypocritical. They act religious and obedient to God, but they are not! God is full of wrath against these nations. He has blessed them in so many ways, more than any other nation in the world, yet they have forsaken God! He is going to correct them because of their sins and because they refuse to listen to Him.

Verse 7 says this about that German power: “Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.” This is the history of Germany! In peacetime, the Germans don’t consider themselves to be fierce and cruel, but in the heat of battle they inflict destruction far worse than anyone would expect. They have a record like no other people of cutting off nations!

We don’t seem to understand that history, but we should. They understood it right after 60 million people died in World War ii. That got their attention for a little while, but not long.

The world must be warned! Bible prophecy is being fulfilled in Lithuania today. Germany is about to start World War iii!

We could prevent that if we would look to God and repent of our sins. That is what we must do: We all need to repent. We are all sinners, and we need God to help us! He could so easily stop this! We must bring God into our life. If you are ever going to solve any of your problems, you have to look to God and heed what He says.

If our nations do not repent—and time is almost up—the history from World War ii will repeat itself in World War iii.