Twenty German police and social officers raided a home in Darmstadt, Germany, in August. Police seized the four children of Dirk and Petra Wunderlich. There was no suspicion of abuse or neglect; the parents had no prior convictions and it seemed like an ordinary household. So what crime prompted this traumatic raid? The parents were homeschooling their children.

The children were finally returned last month after being separated from their parents for three weeks. The German courts agreed to give custody back to the parents under one condition: They had to enroll their children in government-run schools.

“Germany’s ban on homeschooling dates back to the Nazi era, and it persists in large part because Germans fear ethnic and religious separation,” writes Ashley Bateman of Heartland News. Other European nations ban homeschooling, but none enforce it to the extent Germany does. Late Trumpet columnist Ron Fraser wrote about this German law after a similar case occurred in 2007:

Out of a population of 80 million, barely 500 children are presently being homeschooled in Germany. The reason?A law enacted by Hitler himself, in 1938, by which he mandated that all German children be educated by the state. In today’s “free and democratic” Germany, not only does that Hitlerian law still lie on the statute books in Germany, it is being rigidly enforced!

The Wunderlich family experienced a raid comparable to that of a drug bust or the SS storming a home in World War ii in search of Jews. Why is a tactic like this still used in Germany to enforce something as seemingly innocent as homeschooling children? Mr. Fraser continued:

[T]he Strasburg-based European Court of Human Rights ruled that a child’s right to education “by its very nature calls for regulation by the state.” Endorsing the ruling of the German courts, the European Court declared, “Schools represent society, and it is in the children’s interest to become part of that society. The parents’ right to educate does not go so far as to deprive their children of that experience.”

This is a frightening law, considering the history of Germany.

Regulating education is a principle key to forming a nation of unified individuals; Hitler recognized this, and Germany continues it to this day. The Trumpet has warned for years, following in the footsteps of Herbert Armstrong, to watch for a rising united Germany. To learn more about Germany’s history and where it is headed in prophecy, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.