Germany is investing in Latin American industry as never before. The Latin Business Chronicle reports that German daughter companies are producing 10 percent of the Brazilian industrial gross domestic product. Meanwhile, German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp AG is constructing a $4.6 billion giant steel-producing complex that will actively transform the mineral wealth of South America into vast amounts of steel products to be sold throughout Germany and Latin America by 2009. By that time, it will have taken at least 13,000 laborers a full three years to build.

Yet this massive investment project is about a whole lot more than just steel production. It is also about political cooperation between Germany and Brazil. The cooperation that is taking place between ThyssenKrupp AG and the Brazilian government is a means to further cement a business relationship that began all the way back in 1837. When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva came to visit the steel mill construction site this past February, the chairman of ThyssenKrupp’s steel producing arm, Dr. Karl-Ulrich Köhler, delivered a speech that recalled these long-standing ties. After recalling this history, he added, “The steel mill, which involves an investment of €3 billion, will be a solid basis for the continuation of these excellent relations.”

It is these “excellent relations” that have prompted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to call for a “partnership on eye level” with Latin America—and it is “excellent relations” that convinced German Chancellor Angela Merkel to tour Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru from May 13 to 20.

The Latin Business Chronicle further reports that Latin American trade with the EU is growing at nearly twice the rate as its trade with the United States. As the U.S. economy dips into recession, Latin America will be forced to become even more reliant on Germany and the European Union as both a trade partner and source of investment. Indeed, German trade alone across the entire Latin American region has already risen to a value of $62 billion as of last year—making Germany Latin America’s largest trade partner in the EU.

The Flag Follows Trade

To see where this economic “goodwill” is leading, it is helpful to understand the mind of the founder of ThyssenKrupp AG in the post-World War ii world. 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. Possibly more than any other man of his era, he understood that economic relations could be a precursor to political conquest. He once said that his corporation would reverse the old adage that trade follows the flag. In a new, postwar German Reich, the flag would follow trade.

Alfried Krupp and other major German industrialists used their company’s exports to strengthen Germany’s economy and to increase its political influence over other nations—especially resource-rich nations that could serve as an industrial base.

As the richest and most powerful figure in the European Economic Community (established in 1957), Alfried Krupp helped lay the foundation for the economic relations that culminated in the founding of the European Union. As one of the first Western European industrialists to establish business contacts with the markets of Eastern Europe, Krupp helped lay the foundation for the EU’s eastward expansion after the fall of the Soviet Union. As one of the first to recognize the importance of establishing trade contacts with Latin America, he set in motion a process of economic conquest that has now culminated in Brazil being earmarked as ThyssenKrupp’s largest site of foreign investment.

The flag follows trade, and if history is any indication, Latin America may well be the next global region to fall prey to an expanding European Empire—an empire with Germany as its heartland. As T.H. Tetens wrote in his book Germany Plots With the Kremlin, “South America will be conquered by business agents, not by guns.”

History of the Krupps

Krupp’s family has played a vital role in German industry for the last 400 years. Indeed, the Krupp dynasty of industrialists has been dubbed the “Uncrowned Kings of Essen” because of their historic role as the leaders of German industry and arms production. Anton Krupp produced 1,000 gun barrels per year for Germany in the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Friedrich Krupp dug the trenches for Napoleon once Essen allied with France (1812). The Krupps produced the cannons that the German states used in their bombardment of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1871). Alfried’s father, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, was the only German to be tried for war crimes after both world wars for his role in producing weapons of war for both Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler. Alfried worked closely by his father’s side throughout the Second World War until he was arrested by the Allies, convicted at Nuremburg, and imprisoned for war crimes (William Manchester, The Arms of the Krupp).

Even before Alfried’s arrest in 1945, however, he was already planning how his corporation could help establish a strong, postwar German Empire. A shocking World War iiintelligence document released by the U.S. government in 1996 reveals that a certain “Dr. Kasper” was sent as a representative of Fried Krupp AG to a covert meeting of German industrialists that took place on Aug. 10, 1944, in Strasbourg, France. The purpose of this meeting, and its follow-up meeting, was to instruct German industrialists how to conduct “a postwar commercial campaign.” This campaign was to “finance the Nazi Party which would be forced to go underground” and to ensure that “a strong German Empire [could] be created after the defeat.” Specifically, these industrialists were told to strengthen Germany “through their exports” and to “make contacts and alliances with foreign firms.” Alfried definitely took the instruction to heart.

Perhaps even more shocking than what is revealed in this intelligence document, however, is the fact that the Allies released Alfried in 1951 and actually let him reassume sole proprietorship of Fried Krupp AG in 1953.

Upon reassuming control of his company, Alfried immediately went to work strengthening Fried Krupp AG (and Germany) by establishing new export markets in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America. His business genius was such that after 10 years, he entered the European Economic Community as its richest individual and single most powerful industrialist. Alfried had been accused of war crimes, bloody-mindedness and unrepentant Nazism, but no one could ever accuse him of disloyalty to his corporation.

Although Alfried 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. Fried Krupp AG went public as Krupp’s protégé Berthold Beitz became the chairman and executive member of the Board of Trustees of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation in Essen (the foundation that as of 2005 held 23.58 percent of the voting rights in ThyssenKrupp AG). Beitz still holds this position—as well as that of honorary chairman of thte Supervisory Board of ThyssenKrupp AG. Under his leadership, the corporation lost much of its public association with Nazism. What it did not lose was its unswerving devotion to the ideal of a globally dominant postwar Germany. Everything is going just as Alfried Krupp and Dr. Kasper planned over 60 years ago.

Germany’s Latin American Industrial Base

Today, as talk of the German-led EU as the next global superpower abounds, Germany needs the natural resource wealth of Latin America more than ever. 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. It is easy to see why Germany has worked so hard to set new trade records with nations like Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Latin America is far more important to Germany as an industrial base than as a simple trade partner. The total value of goods and services produced by German daughter companies in Latin America is four-fold the value of actual German exports to the region. If the investments of other EU nations like Spain are considered, these figures become even more stunning. Europe as a whole may only be Latin America’s second-greatest trade partner (behind the U.S.), but it is definitely the greatest investor in many Latin American countries.

In addition to ThyssenKrupp AG, German corporate giants such as Siemens, Bayer, Volkswagen, I.G., Farben, and Deutche Bank have also become household names across Latin America as German business agents imbed themselves throughout Mexico, Central America and South America. By investing in a country rather than just simply trading with it, German business agents are ensuring that they have a far deeper stake in a region that supplies them with machines, vehicles, car components, electro-technical equipment, pharmaceuticals, chemical products, plastics, and especially metal.

As the Plain Truth magazine forecast in July 1965, “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.”

Europe’s Next Colonies

Economies across Europe and Latin American are booming as America enters recession. For the first time since the Great Depression, the collapse of the U.S. currency is a definite possibility. If the dollar were to collapse, the economic reverberations would shake this world’s financial systems to their cores. Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel would all experience economic meltdown. The nations of Asia, which are based on American consumerism, would suffer, at least temporarily. The only self-sustaining economic bloc at that point would be Europe. Countries across Latin America (and Africa) would have no option other than complete reliance of the economic ties that a German-led EU is currently establishing with them. Either in name or in effect, the nations of Latin America would be virtual colonies of a European empire.

Actually, the collapse of the dollar may even be expedited by the current trade relationship being established between Latin America and Europe (especially Germany). Even now, Latin American free-trade blocs such as Mercosur are looking to establish free-trade agreements with the EU. As the Plain Truth said in May 1962, “[T]he United States is going to be left out in the cold as two gigantic 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.”

This colonization of Latin America has been in the planning for decades. The same Plain Truth article reveals, “Nazi agents, many of them disguised as ‘legitimate’ businessmen, were rampant throughout South America even before World War ii.”

These “agents” did not just disappear from Latin America when the war was lost. As a matter of fact, the indication is that the number of these “agents” was greatly increased after the war as the odessa project allowed SS officers and Nazi Party members to escape from Germany to Latin America through Vatican ratlines. After all, it was determined at the Aug. 10, 1944, meeting of Nazi industrialists mentioned above that the Nazi Party would place “its less conspicuous but most important members in positions with various German factories as technical experts or members of research and designing offices.”

The groundwork that these Nazi business agents laid during the later half of the 20th century is being exploited by the merchants of the European Union as they expand their political influence around the world.

According to biblical prophecy, Germany’s colonization of Latin America is a greater threat to the U.S. than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Osama bin Laden and Vladimir Putin combined. Besides the threat of being frozen out of world trade and the prospect of facing economic starvation, the presence of a European power in Latin America poses the much greater threat of literal invasion. That is why the U.S. used to enforce the Monroe Doctrine—to keep European powers out of the New World.

Biblical prophecy reveals that God will use Assyria (Germany) as the rod of His anger to punish the people of Israel (America, Britain and Judah). For proof of this, please read Isaiah 10:5-6 and our booklet Nahum—An End-Time Prophecy for Germany. Germany’s takeover of Latin America would put European forces directly on the southern border of the U.S. and present an ideal scenario for a full-scale invasion of America.