Kriegstüchtig is the rallying cry of Gen. Carsten Breuer, Germany’s top-ranking military officer. It means “war ready,” but as the Wall Street Journal explained, krieg carries more weight in German than in English. Unlike in “American English usage, where war is waged on everything from drugs to poverty, the Germans reserve krieg for armies fighting armies. And it plucks a nerve in a country still scarred by its history of militarism.”

Kriegstüchtig means more than being prepared to defend against attack. It means being prepared to launch an attack.

“Breuer has been waging a multifront campaign to rally Germany’s politicians, business people, soldiers and the general public behind efforts to speed the nation’s rearmament,” reports the Wall Street Journal. He believes Russia is three years away from being able to wage a wider war across Europe, with another smaller-scale attack possible at any time. “Breuer is racing to prepare Germany’s armed forces for war,” it reports.

As part of that effort, Breuer is giving commanders money to buy drones off the shelf so they can experiment with new tactics. There’s no time to wait for traditional bureaucratic procurement processes.

Security through warfare: Kriegstüchtig was front and center this weekend as Germany hosted generals, defense officials and journalists from around the world for the Munich Security Conference from Friday through Sunday. The Wall Street Journal‘s profile was timed for the conference, and so too was an op-ed Breuer wrote with his British counterpart, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, published yesterday in Die Welt and the Guardian. The two leaders urged nations across Europe to work together, unify their forces, and form a strong military.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reminded the conference of his goal to make the Bundeswehr “the strongest conventional army in Europe as quickly as possible.”

“We have launched big conventional procurement projects in the field of air defense, deep precision strikes and satellite technology,” he said. “We are reviving our defense industry. New factories are opening. New jobs are being created. New technologies are emerging.”

“The most important thing is to turn the switch in our minds now,” he said. “We have understood that in the era of big powers, our freedom is no longer a given. It is at stake. We will need to show firmness and determination to assert this freedom.”

Munich Security Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger also urged EU nations to “ramp up defense production” yesterday, and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told the conference that Germany aims to learn from what “is happening in Ukraine and benefit from the vast amounts of data and the experience being gathered from the combat taking place there.”

Alarm bells: The switch in German minds is turning. Its military is rising quickly. The world watches as Germany builds its newest war machine, yet almost no one is concerned. History alone should warn us of the dangers, but the warning of Bible prophecy rings even louder. The Trumpet and the Plain Truth under Herbert W. Armstrong have been sounding the prophetic alarm for decades.