Just why did German Chancellor Angela Merkel invite the Dalai Lama to visit Berlin last September in the face of heavy protests from Beijing? Why is the Dalai Lama returning to Berlin this May? Why have prominent German politicians been engaged in diplomacy with Tibet since the 1980s? Is there any connection between Germany’s aggressive pro-Tibetan stance today and the same stance that Germany took with Tibet under the Third Reich? Is there any connection at all between Germany’s East Asia policy under the Third Reich and the East Asia policy of the government of a united Germany today?

One of the very best of German intelligence sources, German Foreign Policy (gfp), has been closely following the machinations of the Merkel government in its relations with the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government over the matter of Tibetan independence. The journalists at gfp deeply understand the German mind and the history of the German peoples. Being independent of party bias and government influence, they are able to give a unique perspective on the strategic trends in Germany’s current international relations. This results in their incisive portrayal of the German imperial strategy that is quite foreign to much of the West’s mass media.

So it is with Germany’s present East Asia policy, which Berlin is implementing with increasing vigor as the Beijing Olympics approaches. Few among the West’s media pundits can truly grasp the strategy behind Germany’s involvement with the populations on China’s western and northern borders.

Last fall, gfp produced a series of excellent reports on this intriguing Far East policy of today’s united Germany. In a startling claim, it declared that “Berlin’s Tibet offensive is not motivated by its concern for a minority culture, as it likes to pretend, it is the repeated attempt to lay hand on about half of the Chinese territory and to use its population for the struggle against Beijing” (Oct. 2, 2007, emphasis mine throughout).

It is a “repeated attempt” by Germany in the sense that it is but a revival of Germany’s East Asia policy that dates clear back to the 1930s. Even some of the actors involved in this scenario today are Asians who took part in Germany’s strategy for the creation of a Central Asian buffer zone between China and Russia under Hitler’s Nazi regime 70 years ago. As gfp observes, “Berlin’s Tibet activities are part of a cross-party general consensus and are in line with old traditions of German foreign policy that, already in the 1930s and 1940s, considered Lhasa [Tibet’s capital city] as an important base for interfering in Central Asia. The German-Tibetan contacts that were established at the time have not only outlived World War ii, but are still functioning today” (Sept. 27, 2007).

This may seem quite remarkable. However, it needs to be considered in the light of the fact that Germany was never effectively denazified. As Herbert Armstrong continually pointed out, following defeat in World War ii the Nazis simply went underground and started planning for a third attempt at world rule. In effect, the Nazi plan for the unification of Europe and the extension of German hegemony from Berlin to the south and to the east has been all but accomplished through the creation of the European Union, a German idea from its beginning.

In his book Europe’s Full Circle—a powerful expose of Germany’s corporate elites and the penetration of fascist thought into the European Union enterprise—British political economist Rodney Atkinson compares the Nazi Europe of the past with today’s Europe. The similarity is remarkable. He states, “The European Union is based precisely on the social and economic structures of the ‘European Economic Community’ proposed by the Hitler regime in1941. … None of this should surprise us, since the head of the ‘European Section’ of the German Foreign Office in Adenauer’s post-war government had held the same post under Hitler.”

This being the case, it should not surprise us to learn that, in respect of Germany’s Far East foreign policy, “Since the mid-1980s, Germany has been actively reviving its traditions of cooperation that had been established by the SS [Nazi Germany’s secret service] in the 1930s” (gfp, Sept. 22, 2007).

Just what is the strategy behind today’s Germany “reviving its traditions of cooperation” within the context of the nation’s foreign policy? “The idea of gaining a foothold in Asia with the cooperation of Mongolia and forces struggling for a Greater Mongolia has never been abandoned. As the Wehrmacht continued its eastward advance in 1942 and Japanese troops reached the borders of Tibet, the plans to create a buffer state (a ‘Pan-Mongolian Federation’) between the world powers, were reactivated. This federation—comprised of Tibet, seeking to enhance its relations with Berlin, Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, that in 1937, with the aid of Japan, had won its sovereignty—would be under the hegemony of Germany and Japan. Only the defeat of the World War ii aggressors thwarted the application of these plans” (ibid.).

According to gfp, Berlin’s support of the Tibetan separatist movement dates back even to the days of Imperial Japan in the 1920s. Germany’s basic overall strategy at that time, consolidated by the Third Reich and revived under a unified Germany today, is to aggressively support the populations of all of the autonomous regions of northern and western China—Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia—against the central government in Beijing. In a real case of déjà vu, we see that “similar political concepts … are being echoed still today in Japan, the former Axis partner of the German Reich, and China’s fiercest rival” (ibid.).

With Berlin now exhibiting a renewed confidence in international relations, the German government is taking prime advantage of the recent unrest in Tibet. Berlin views the current Tibetan disturbance and the inhumane manner in which Beijing has attempted to deal with it as demonstrating that Beijing’s sovereignty over its westward flank is in jeopardy, thus, in turn, threatening China’s international prestige at a time when it needs to convey a positive image in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. Hence the aggressive stand of the German chancellor and her associates, across the party divide, cranking up the pressure on China’s government. One German government official stated last November that “The Olympic Games will particularly expose ‘grievances in China’ to the world’s public and will harm more than help the People’s Republic” (gfp, March 17).

Same dog, same tricks.

Just as there is little difference between Berlin’s European foreign policy of yesteryear and that of today, so it is with Germany’s Far East foreign policy under the Third Reich and that policy today. To quote our friends at gfp once again, “Supporting extensive autonomy rights for Tibet and even its secession is in line with the traditional German East Asia policy. Already in the 1930s and 1940s, Berlin considered this region to be an important base for expanding its influence toward China. … Fearing its future power, Berlin is seeking to weaken its ascending East Asian rival” (ibid.).

History has recorded the results of not only Germany’s, but also Japan’s, pursuit of these policies from the 1920s to the mid-1940s. They were not pretty. Given the technology of warfare today—the massive power that can be unleashed by the touch of a button from one side of the planet to the other, or even from beyond the planet, from outer space—if the results were to be repeated in the future, the outcome would be unthinkable.

Given biblical prophecies concerning the future clash between the hoards of the East and a German-led European power, there is an intriguing irony in the fact that of all the dissertations on the subject of warfare that have been written over time, two classics still are quoted to this day: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War—one authored by a Chinese, the other by a German.

We may hope that these two great nations never clash beyond the level of diplomacy and dialogue.

Yet such is a vain hope.

What we see today in the revival of Germany’s old East Asia strategy and China’s reaction to it is but a forerunner of a much more heated battle to come.

Read our booklets Germany and the Holy Roman Empire and Russia and China in Prophecy for a reality check on where this is all leading. Guaranteed, it’s not what you will read, hear or view in the mass media today, but it definitely will be the headline news of tomorrow!