Volkswagen to Convert Car Plant Into Weapons Factory?

Volkswagen has not made weapons since World War ii, when its factories built the V-1 flying bomb for Hitler’s Wehrmacht. That may be about to change.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that VW is in talks with Israeli defense company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to convert its Osnabrück plant in Lower Saxony from automobile manufacturing to production of components for the Iron Dome missile defense system, which Israel developed and has shared with Germany. The German government is actively backing the deal.

• The Osnabrück plant employs 2,300 workers and faces closure after VW ends production of the T-Roc Cabriolet in 2027. The Iron Dome deal would save those jobs.
• Under the proposal, Osnabrück would manufacture Iron Dome launchers, heavy-duty transport trucks and electricity generators. The interceptor missiles would be produced at a separate Rafael facility to be built elsewhere in Germany.
• Production could begin within 12 to 18 months, with “comparatively little investment” required to retool the plant, the Financial Times reported.
• Rafael intends to sell these Iron Dome components to other European governments, positioning Germany as a hub for European air defense production.

In context: Germany, considered one of Israel’s most trusted allies in Europe, has pledged more than $577 billion in defense spending by 2030, with air defense listed as a top priority. It approved a constitutional amendment removing its debt brake to unlock unlimited defense spending.

• Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made military buildup the defining mission of his government. Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, is on a hiring and expansion spree.

Rafael works with Rheinmetall and Diehl Defense, another German firm, to manufacture antitank systems in Germany. The Volkswagen talks are the most visible sign yet of Germany edging toward a war economy.

• The last time German industry, including Volkswagen, suspended civilian production plans and retooled for war, its manufacturing output contributed directly to the deaths of 60 million people.

Prophetic implications: Herbert W. Armstrong spent decades warning that Germany would rebuild its military machine and lead a seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, prophesied in the Bible.

Ezekiel 23 describes the end-time nations of Israel turning to “lovers”—powerful allies—for protection, rather than God, only to have those lovers turn against them. Here, Judah (the modern nation of Israel) is handing its crown-jewel air defense technology to Germany, praising “the enduring strength of the Berlin-Jerusalem alliance.” Germany is absorbing that technology, incorporating it into its factories, and planning to sell it across Europe. Israel believes it is gaining a powerful protector. The Bible warns that this calculation will prove catastrophically wrong.