Europe’s African Pillage
After clearing away the rubble of World War ii, Germany set about unifying Europe and corporately dominating key international markets. But to achieve its ultimate global ambitions, it needed to secure the natural resources of Africa.
Germany’s intentions to gain an upper hand on the African continent were nothing new. Ever since its emergence as a unified European power in the late 1800s, the very cornerstone of German design for world rule has been the control of both Europe and Africa.
Arriving late on the colonial scene, the Germans embarked on their grand scheme. At the turn of the century, they quickly acquired southwest Africa and German east Africa, now Tanzania (see map, p. 18). This was to have been the beginning of the new German empire of Mittel-Afrika, the intention being to span the continent from Kenya in the east to the Gold Coast (Ghana) in the west, from southwest Africa to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
With the control of this central core area, and conspiring with the Arabs in the north and the anti-British Boers (Afrikaners) in the south, the Germans hoped to shove the British out of Africa. This would have seriously challenged Britain’s role as world leader. However, the grand plan came crashing down with Germany’s defeat in World War i. In the war’s aftermath, Germany was stripped of the few colonies it had.
Despite its defeat, Germany continued its plans to seize Africa. As Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler followed the same blueprint as his predecessors, seeking cooperation with the Arabs in the north and the Afrikaners in the south.
The defeat of Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein by General Montgomery’s Allied forces once again put a halt, but not an end, to German designs for “Eurafrica.” Yet, by this time, the German leaders in business and politics had learned a powerful lesson. War was no longer the way to win an empire! Immediately after World War ii, Germany’s geopoliticians, working underground from Spain and Argentina, began formulating a new and bolder strategy. This time the objective was to be achieved through economic, not military, warfare, using a federation of European nations with Germany at its heart.
In September 1966, the Plain Truth magazine warned of Europe’s African ambitions: “A captured document circulated from the Nazi geopolitical center in Madrid in 1951 outlined the new plan…. This startling document lays bare plans for a powerful united German-led Europe with Africa as its raw materials storehouse.”
The article went on to further quote the startling 1951 Nazi document: “Our [Germany’s] entire economic and political efforts in the future must be directed towards bringing about the unification of Europe as quickly as possible…. The development for achieving a unified Europe must come [first] from the economic side.
“Political propaganda must be carried out cleverly, and the unification of Europe must not appear as an enterprise holding out particular attraction for German interests…. Germany’s problem is this: to gain an economically dominating and politically influential position from within. Force of gravity and the logic of development will later on allow us to automatically grow into the role of leadership.”
Since that time, the German plan of “the battle from the boardroom” has worked like a charm. The briefcase battalions have worked hard to bring together their fractured region. The goal of a united Europe has seemed so right to the English-speaking world. What better way to stop the tide of advancing communism, the West thought, than to build a huge anti-communist bloc in “free” Europe? The majority in America and Britain have not seen the clear and present danger posed by this European juggernaut.
T.H. Tetens warned in his book Germany Plots With the Kremlin, “A European Union with Germany as its strongest pillar will turn out to be the greatest blunder. Germany’s industry will not only dominate the markets in Europe, in competition with the British and the USA, but it will also conquer additional markets in Latin America, Africa and Asia.”
Africa, a continent rife with aids and stricken by famine and endemic leadership problems, can offer little resistance to the European Union’s (EU) march southward to seize the resources which it will require to energize its extending empire. Resource-rich Africa is a plum ripe for the plucking by the global corporatist EU.
The corporate elites of Europe have now firmly laid the groundwork for plundering Africa’s treasure chests.
EU and OAU
On April 3-4, Egypt hosted the first-ever Africa-Europe Summit. Under the aegis of the European Union and Organization of African Unity (oau), the 15 EU member states and 52 oau member states convened in Cairo to formulate and sign a joint “Plan of Action.” This extensive document stated that both EU and oau members are “committed to work towards a new strategic dimension to the global partnership between Africa and Europe….” The summit was seen as the key to furthering the “special bond” of the two continents. The new agreement supercedes the 1995 Lome Convention signed by the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific states.
The Plan of Action promotes Africa’s networking with EU partners in everything from economic issues, external debt, human rights, terrorism, health, education and the environment, to the real prize of industrial development of Africa’s vastly untapped, rich natural resources.
Basket Case
Today, Africa is a basket case. It is home to over 70 percent of the world’s least-developed countries. Over 15 armed conflicts currently rage from Algeria to South Africa, with a combined death toll in the millions. Famine, drought and poverty continue as cruel torments. The continent has been decimated by the aids virus (see story, p. 11). Algeria has continuing internal problems. The border conflict between famine-struck nations Ethiopia and Eritrea continues to flare, despite the oau and EU’s recent peace accord and deployment of UN forces. The region of central Africa is in constant turmoil. Now Zimbabwe and Sierra Leone are imploding. Kenya is also at risk of following suit.
Billions of dollars of financial aid have not solved Africa’s woes. Its total external debt is a staggering us$350 billion, and African states are spending $23 billion, or 30.9 percent of their exports, to service their annual debts. Africa’s annual economic growth stands at 3 percent, while its debt growth rate is a skyrocketing 23 percent per year.
So what can such a tragic scenario offer to the European Union? Simply put, cheap resources (extracted by unlimited cheap labor) for its industry—raw materials that are there for the taking.
Seven of the 15 EU member states are former colonial powers in Africa. France, in particular, has played a dominant role in EU negotiations with African states. The EU provides Africa with $15 billion every five years, more than they receive from any other single source. In addition, the EU is Africa’s major creditor. According to the German Economic Ministry, over 400 German firms are active in southern Africa, and there are more on the way. Foreign investors earn, on average, a return of 25 percent on their investments in Africa, which is double the international average.
Speaking at the start of the recent Cairo summit, European Commission President Romano Prodi told attendees, “The plight of Africa is essentially Europe’s problem, not that of the U.S. or other powers, because of past links and proximity…” (Financial Times, April 4). He went on to declare that EU-African cooperation had “deep roots, and we should return to them” (ibid.). During the summit, Mr. Prodi met privately on the sidelines with key African leaders to work to initiate the swift integration of the Plan of Action.
One key player in this Euro-African drama is South Africa. As we reported in our July 1999 edition, the EU and the Republic of South Africa (rsa) entered into an extensive trade agreement that opened EU markets to 95 percent of rsa exports. In addition, the rsa will allow 86 percent of EU goods to freely enter its domestic market. This is a huge concession to the EU.
Since Nelson Mandela has been put out to pasture, making way for the youthful Thabo Mbeki, South Africa has eagerly taken up the mantel as Europe’s African star pupil. At the Cairo summit, Mbeki boldly rattled the begging bowl in front of EU delegates, thus pleasing his African comrades, and then spoke in support of the EU and its African policy, pressing for a united Africa linked with a united Europe.
On April 29 in Austin, Texas, the Trumpet interviewed Richard Parker, executive editor at Stratfor Systems, a Texas-based intelligence agency. Mr. Parker commented on the future of Africa in light of the EU’s overtures:
Parker: “It appears to us that if anybody can make some sense of that part of the continent, it is the South Africans. In many ways they are attempting to assert a regional hegemony. They have the resources with which to do it. The other thing, which is probably an unfortunate and sad side effect of what is going on on the continent right now, is the possibility that multi-national firms, that have a strong interest in the natural resources there, would be able to carve out their own miniature states, essentially.”
Trumpet: “Corporate colonization, you could say?”
Parker: “That’s exactly correct. Ultimately, we believe that towards the end of the decade, given the lack of political direction in Africa’s largest states, that that is the likeliest outcome in areas with important natural resources, whether that be diamonds, or viable minerals that are of strategic value, or petroleum.”
When in Rome…
The June 1971 Plain Truth article “How Rome Destroyed North Africa” chronicled the Roman Empire’s ancient plunder.
Once the “granary of the world,” northern Africa was turned to empty desert by the pillaging Romans who stripped the area of its lush forests and destroyed its rich soil and vast array of exotic animals. Emperor Augustus alone killed 3,500 animals for gladiator shows during his popular Roman festivals.
Today, with Africa in economic, political and military disarray, under the guise of the EU-oau Plan of Action the resurrecting Holy Roman Empire is once again about to plunder the African treasure chest to help fire the engines of its expanding global ambitions.
Europe simply needs energy resources to drive its industries. In December 1998, the Trumpet warned of the effect of the U.S. withdrawal from Africa. “Watch for France and the EU countries taking advantage of the U.S. withdrawal to consolidate their oil interests in Africa,” we wrote.
Having taken advantage of U.S. free-trade gridlock and snapped up the key Latin American market, Europe has once again trumped the U.S., this time in Africa. As the U.S. pulls out of Africa, the EU is moving in. Now EU Commission President Prodi is not afraid to tell the world that “the plight of Africa is essentially Europe’s problem, not that of the U.S. or other powers.” The EU is right now busy securing Africa as a vital raw-materials ace in the hole.
Africa in Prophecy
Did you know that Europe’s policy in Africa was foretold in the pages of your own Bible? Long ago God revealed to the Prophet Daniel what was to happen in our time today.
Daniel prophesied that the EU, described as a “little horn,” would push south into the Mediterranean and Africa, then east into the glorious land, or Jerusalem (Dan. 8:9). He also revealed that the EU would possess the key to the African treasure chest: “But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at
his steps” (Dan. 11:43).
With Europe’s own natural resources waning, it needs raw materials. This is where Africa fits into a German-led European grand plan.
Quoting again from the captured document circulated from the Nazi geopolitical center in Madrid in 1951: “For its industrial development, Germany requires—much more than in the past—raw materials, sources of energy and a market with strong purchasing power. All this it can attain only in a unified Europe and through the simultaneous development of Africa in a common European undertaking” (op. cit., Plain Truth; emphasis theirs).
In the guise of a united Europe, Eurocrats and Eurocorporatists are carving out a new economic empire—energized from Brussels but dominated by Berlin. In the process, they are picking up the economically shattered pieces of the British Empire! It is all happening exactly as they planned.
Watchman Warning
As the Afrikan Korps retreated from El Alemain, Herbert W. Armstrong, editor in chief of the Plain Truth, warned the world in advance of a German-led European revival. A revival of the Holy Roman Empire! America, Britain and its Commonwealth nations have not heeded this warning. Today, the Trumpet magazine provides the only true watchman warning revealing the real agenda behind a uniting Europe. It is the final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire (Rev. 17:12).
The impact of this powerful union will not be limited to Europe alone. “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” (Rev. 18:3). Prophecy clearly shows us that the European trade giant will stretch its economic tentacles to all parts of the Earth, including the continent of Africa. Read it for yourself in Ezekiel 27:15, 22: “The men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony…. The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold.”
As Britain and America march out of Africa and into the archives of superpower has-beens, the dark shadow of Europe, guided by a great false church, positions itself to conquer Africa. The suffering in Africa will continue, as rich Eurocrats get richer and poor African countries get poorer.
World events are in a time of no more delay (a correct translation of “time no longer” in Revelation 10:6). Continue reading the Trumpet and stay informed on God’s perspective and purpose for you in the closing hours of man’s self-inflicted suffering, pain and sorrow.
Soon, in blinding brightness and unstoppable power, Jesus Christ will return and, with the saints of the Most High, break in pieces the failed governments of man, and establish His loving law and family government over all nations (Dan. 2:35; Isa. 9:6-7). Europe’s historic fleecing of Africa will be stopped. There will be no more famine, war, poverty or disease. Africa’s deserts will again blossom as a rose (Isa. 35:1), the wolf, lamb, calf and lion will dwell together, and little children will lead them (Isa. 11:6-7). Yes, very soon this Earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea (v. 9).