The Hidden Enemy in America’s Backyard

South America is turning its back on the United States.

This is a far greater potential threat to the U.S. than most people would imagine. To understand why requires a clear-eyed look not only at the remarkable shifts in trade relationships appearing in today’s headlines, but also some unsavory facts of history that some have tried to bury. You need this understanding.

Brazil is driving the creation of an economic, political and military union that threatens to exclude the U.S. from military planning in the vast region spanning from Antarctica to Panama. Should it come to fruition, this project would represent the final undoing of a fracturing relationship the United States worked almost 200 years to build.

On May 23, leaders from the 12 sovereign nations of South America met in the Brazilian capital and signed the constituent treaty outlining the legal framework of the Union of South American Nations (unasur). This plan would establish an EU-style government for South America. It would unite the continent’s two major trade blocs—Mercosur and the Andean Community—and create a federal parliament based in Bolivia. A new South American Defense Council would mediate regional conflicts and defend the region from foreign interference.

“We are going to make it so that the strength of South America is born of the union of our peoples,” Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim said in April.

The treaty will come into full force after it is ratified by nine of its 12 would-be member states.

While there are definite obstacles to overcome, the political, economic and military integration of South America is bound to be far smoother than the rocky road the European Union has traveled for the past 51 years. It is the only multinational continent in the world united by a common linguistic background, a common culture, and a common religion. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s exclamation that “From Mexico to Argentina, we are one whole nation” is an overstatement, but it definitely holds a kernel of truth.

This region is being united by more than just religion, culture and money, however. It is also being united by a dangerous ideology: anti-Americanism.

How Latin America Is Turning Red

One sentiment that emerged during the framing of unasur and the South American Defense Council was that the U.S. is in no way to be involved. “[T]here is no possibility of participation by the United States,” the Brazilian defense minister said, “because the council is South American and the U.S. is not in South America.”

The U.S. has been deeply entrenched in Latin American affairs since 1823, when President James Monroe established the Monroe Doctrine to keep European powers out of the New World. In pursuit of American interests, the U.S. has overthrown no fewer than 40 hostile Latin American governments in the 20th century alone. What many Americans view as a policy of protection and liberation, however, is now seen in Latin America as rank imperialism.

The bbc, in an analysis titled “How the U.S. ‘lost’ Latin America,” summed up the situation this way: “If you were to color a map of anti-Americanism in Latin America, for nearly 50 years Fidel Castro’s Cuba has been the deepest red. Three of the most economically developed countries—Brazil, Chile and Argentina—are now in varying shades of left-of-center pink” (April 3, 2006). It went on to say that Venezuela and Bolivia could both now be considered deep red and that current conditions in Peru, Mexico and Nicaragua indicate they soon may become more anti-American. Colombia is the only country in the region that could be considered a U.S. ally.

U.S.-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger, who has dedicated herself to exposing U.S. intervention in Venezuela, claims the United States has literally lost control of the region. “The backyard of the U.S. has gone,” she says. “It’s created its own neighborhood, and the U.S. isn’t part of it” (Green Left Weekly, May 21).

Former Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro contemptuously contends that while U.S. politicians can always seem to find the money to sponsor wars in Latin America, they rarely seem to come up with enough funds for peacetime developments. She claims that even a slice of the money used to back anti-Communist Contra guerrillas in her country would be enough to build a whole new Nicaragua.

South America’s Rising Star

If peacetime investment levels are any indication, however, Germany and its EU allies should be Latin America’s best friends. Even though the European trade bloc is still only Latin America’s second-greatest trade partner (behind the United States), it is definitely Latin America’s greatest investor and its primary donor of developmental aid.

As anti-Americanism increases, Europe is becoming the rising star south of the Rio Grande.

German trade alone across the entire Latin American region had already risen to a value of $55 billion as of last year—making Germany Latin America’s largest trade partner in the EU. Germany has sold 340 of its tanks to the Chilean military over the past 12 years. Industrial giants like ThyssenKrupp AG have been investing in Latin America since 1837. Now ThyssenKrupp is developing a huge, $4.6 billion steel-producing complex in Brazil, intended to supply steel products to both Germany and South American countries. A full 10 percent of Brazil’s industrial gross domestic product is already produced by German daughter companies throughout the nation.

Granted, Germany’s relationship with Venezuela is still pretty rocky at times. Nevertheless, high levels of economic investment, developmental aid and arms exports are forging a strategic partnership between the EU—particularly Germany—and most of Latin America.

This relationship is not completely one-sided by any means, because Latin America is far more important to Europe as a raw materials base than as a simple trade partner. The entire region from the Rio Grande to Terra del Fuego is a giant storehouse of timber, natural gas, crude oil, minerals, precious metals, and especially iron. These are resources Europe needs if it is to continue its ascension to superpower status.

So, what does the emergence of a unified, anti-American, European-oriented trade bloc mean for the world?

Virtual Colonies of a New Empire

Consider the following statement from the May 1962 Plain Truth: “The United States is going to be left out in the cold as twogigantic trade blocs, Europe and Latin America, mesh together and begin calling the shots in world commerce. The United States is going to be literally besieged—economically—frozen out of world trade.”

With the U.S. having grown increasingly dependent on Latin America for goods, especially foodstuffs, it could find its supply of basic staples drastically impacted if the U.S. is frozen out of Latino markets. With American agriculture increasingly plagued by floods, fires, droughts, pests and disease—in addition to the loss of huge tracts of land to urban development and the squeezing of its farmers by excessive input costs—such an event would place the whole U.S. economy at risk of collapse.

Such a crisis would add to a host of other economic pressures, such as the ongoing dive of the dollar and American trade being hurt by restrictive EU regulations. Major creditor nations could pinch America’s already broken economy simply by demanding the U.S. begin paying its debts. In the end, a convergence of several factors could trigger economic meltdown in the U.S. and cause a domino effect across all nations that are significantly dollar-dependent.

Such a combination of events could well place the EU in the box seat. Countries across Latin America, and also to an extent Africa, would then have no option other than to completely rely for survival on the economic ties that a German-led EU is rapidly locking them into.

Either in name or in effect, the nations of Latin America would become virtual colonies of a European empire. It is as T.H. Tetens wrote in his book Germany Plots With the Kremlin, “South America will be conquered by business agents, not by guns.”

The Resurrection of a Secret Plan

Latin America’s growing integration and alliance with Europe at first appears to be the haphazard result of undirected forces. The shocking part, however, is that Germany has had a goal to control Latin America for at least a century.

It is well known that German Kaiser Wilhelm II had planned to use Mexico as a launchpad for an invasion of the U.S. if America entered World War I. It was the revelation of this plan in the Zimmerman Telegraph that finally prompted America to enter the war on the side of the Allies. What is not as well known, however, is that in addition to this proposed alliance with Mexico, the Germans also sought a strong presence in the southern part of South America. Shortly before hostilities broke out in World War I, Otto Tannenberg, the famous German general and propagandist, wrote that “Germany will take under its protection the republics of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay; furthermore, the southern third of Bolivia and the southern portion of Brazil” (Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, The Plot Against the Peace, 1945).

The defeat of the German Empire in World War I brought a temporary halt to these plans. They were resumed, however, once the Nazis came to power.

Nazi propaganda minister Paul Joseph Goebbels wrote in the March 26, 1944, edition of his personal publication, Das Reich, that “Argentina will one day be at the head of a tariff union comprising the nations in the southern half of South America. Such a focus of opposition against the United States of America will, together with Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, form a powerful economic bloc; and eventually, by way of Peru, it will spread northward to place the dollar colony of Brazil in a difficult position.”

It is unsettling how close the situation today matches Goebbels’ prediction. South America is composed of two tariff unions that are about to merge into an economic and political alliance. Argentina may or may not be the head of this union, but it is certainly a major member, and the “dollar colony” of Brazil is already on board as the most dominant member of the forming Union of South American Nations. It won’t be long before this bloc is working under the protection of Germany as “a focus of opposition against the United States.”

How did this happen? Not overnight!

In 1996, the American government declassified a shocking World War II intelligence document relating the details of a secret Nazi meeting of industrialists that took place on Aug. 10, 1944, in Strasbourg, France. The Nazis’ purpose was to instruct German industrialists how to conduct “a postwar commercial campaign” to finance the Nazi Party, “which would be forced to go underground,” thus ensuring that “a strong German Empire [could] be created after the defeat.” These industrialists were specifically told to strengthen Germany “through their exports” and to “make contacts and alliances with foreign firms.” Many of the corporations represented at this meeting, such as Krupp and Volkswagenwerk, chose Latin America as their site of foreign investment. (We have reprinted this document in our free booklet The Rising Beast. Request a free copy.)

Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was the chairman of the board of directors of ThyssenKrupp’s predecessor organization, Fried Krupp AG, from 1943 until his death in 1968. He was the man in charge of producing weapons for the Third Reich during the latter half of World War II. Possibly more than any other man of his era, he understood that economic relations could be a precursor to political conquest. He once said his corporation would reverse the old adage that trade follows the flag: In a postwar German Reich, the flag would follow trade.

After Krupp was convicted for war crimes at Nuremberg in 1947, the Allies released him from prison in 1951 and let him resume sole proprietorship of Fried Krupp AG (the predecessor of ThyssenKrupp AG) in 1953. Loyal to the instructions his representative received from Nazi officials at the Strasbourg meeting in 1944, Alfried immediately went to work creating new export markets in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America (especially Brazil). Although he died in 1967, with his personal copy of Mein Kampf still on his nightstand, his corporation continued to follow the path he had set for it. The current leadership of ThyssenKrupp AG may or may not know much about its corporation’s past association with Nazism, but it is definitely still creating German ties to Latin America as it earmarks Brazil as its largest site of foreign investment.

It is also well known that many Nazi war criminals—such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and Martin Bormann—fled to sympathetic governments in Latin America after World War II in order to escape prosecution. Even as late as 1962, Gunther Theodor—an agent of an international organization that was then trying to capture Bormann—told the Brazilian newspaper Correio da Manha that “Neo-Nazism is simply boiling over in South America, operating under the shield of the Communists.”

As the May 1962 Plain Truth further reported, “Germany’s economic conquest of South America has been in the planning for decades. Nazi agents, many of them disguised as ‘legitimate’ businessmen, were rampant throughout South America even before World War II.”

It has been estimated that enough Nazis escaped into Latin America via Vatican ratlines to establish an elite cadre big enough for another fascist regime complete with chiefs of state, cabinet ministers and military men.

Almost all of these Nazi agents have since died, but their children and successors are still working to strengthen the relationship between Latin American countries and the Fatherland. Everything is just a bit more sophisticated than it used to be. The racist political activists of yesterday have become the respectable businessmen and technocrats of today.

The Fascist Threat

It is easy to see that an anti-American, European-oriented political and economic union in Latin America presents a major economic threat to the U.S. Yet the threat is even greater than just that.

Henry A. Wallace was the 33rd vice president of the U.S., from 1941 to 1945. In an article he wrote for the New York Times in 1944 titled “The Danger of American Fascism,” he wrote, “The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America. The effect of the war has been to raise the cost of living in most Latin American countries much faster than the wages of labor. The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives. Our chemical and other manufacturing concerns are all too often ready to let the Germans have Latin American markets, provided the American companies can work out an arrangement which will enable them to charge high prices to the consumer inside the United States. Following this war, technology will have reached such a point that it will be possible for Germans, using South America as a base, to cause us much more difficulty in World War III than they did in World War II. The military and landowning cliques in many South American countries will find it attractive financially to work with German fascist concerns as well as expedient from the standpoint of temporary power politics.”

This is a chilling, yet very accurate assessment of what could happen if fascism were ever to gain a hold on Germany. As long as Angela Merkel (or someone like her) rules, America and the rest of the world appear to be under no great threat from an imperialistic Europe. If a second Adolf Hitler or a new Charlemagne were ever to come to power in Germany, however, the consequences would be devastating. German technology has reached such a point and German dominance over both Europe and Latin America has developed far enough that America would not be able to weather World War III as it did World War II.

With the help of hostile nations to America’s south, a new German Reich could reverse D-day and carry out a full-scale invasion of the United States, for example, by gathering in Mexico and swarming across the Rio Grande River.

Latin America in Prophecy

As shocking as this situation may sound, Goebbels and Wallace were not the first to recognize that Germany could use Latin America as a base against the U.S.

In the 17th and 18th chapters of the biblical book of Revelation, God labels the German-led, Vatican-influenced empire that is emerging in Europe as “Babylon the Great.” In the corresponding Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27, the same empire appears under the name of the most powerful trading center of the ancient Mediterranean world—Tyre.

A prophecy in Ezekiel 27:12 directed at the king of Tyre says, “Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs.”

Anciently, the people of Tarshish lived in southern Spain. Today, these people have spread throughout Spain and its old colonies in Latin America.

It can be clearly seen then that the modern-day Latin Americans are prophesied to be a great trading people that provides a resource-hungry European empire with silver, iron, tin, lead and other goods. All these products are currently major exports of Latin America. As the July 1965 Plain Truth says of this verse, “Flowing across the Atlantic to feed the hungry furnaces of the Ruhr and the other industrial complexes of Europe will come the rich mineral wealth of Latin America.”

More is prophesied for this European empire than mere economic dominance. In Isaiah 10:5-6, God says Assyria (modern-day Germany) would be the rod of His anger used to punish the hypocritical nations of Israel (modern-day America, Britain and its dominions) and Judah (the Jewish state of Israel). This prophecy says the Germans will take Anglo-America’s spoil and will tread its people down into the mire of the streets. Such terminology indicates more than just a nuclear invasion; it indicates an invasion of foreign troops that can “tread” and “take.” (Request Germany and the Holy Roman Empire and The United States and Britain in Prophecy for proof of these national identities.)

It would be very plausible for this Germanic invasion force to exploit its alliance with Latin America and use that region as a launchpad into the U.S. The same overarching church that will be guiding Europe also heads the dominant religion throughout Latin America, and such a plan was already being considered in the time of the kaiser.

Washington is currently obsessed with the Islamic threat and, secondarily, those posed by Russia and China. The Bible is clear, however, that while radical Islam may be a painful thorn in America’s side and Asia a major economic competitor, the major threat to Anglo-Saxon nations is posed by a great power called “the king of the north.” Your Bible prophesies that only those who heed a trumpeted final warning to the Israelitish nations, and who repent of disobeying their God, will be protected from the coming onslaught from this European power.

These are sobering and terrifying predictions, but they are also signs of the best news anyone could ever hear. After this nuclear calamity, Jesus Christ will return to this Earth and set up a reign of peace, happiness and prosperity that will last for all eternity. For more information on this joyous reign of peace, request our free book Isaiah’s End-Time Vision.