The German military now has its highest number of personnel since conscription was abolished in 2011. In a nation beset by bad economic and political news, Deutsche Welle hailed it as “a comparatively rare success story.”

The Bundeswehr employs 186,700 troops as of July 31, the Defense Ministry reported yesterday. This means that its plan to increase that number to 260,000 by the mid-2030s is on course. (It also employs 81,000 civilians.)

• The German military has grown by 3,700 (2 percent) since July last year.
• Applications to join the military are up 26 percent year-on-year.

German authorities thought recruiting the extra soldiers they wanted would be a real challenge. So far, they’ve had no shortage of volunteers.

It’s another component of Germany’s rapid military transformation. In our February issue, we wrote:

From the earliest issues of the Trumpet newsmagazine in the 1990s, we focused on Germany’s military rise, continuing the legacy of Plain Truth editor in chief Herbert W. Armstrong, who died in 1986. … In the 1990s, we saw Germany unite. Then we saw it get strong. Now we see it militarizing.

Our decades of warning about Germany are proving true, one headline after another.