Look Who Rules Europe!

Imagine if Germany had launched a military takeover of Greece this summer. If Leopard tanks had rolled across the border, bombers launched raids on Athens and paratroopers once again had landed on Crete.

It would have shocked the world. Wherever you live, your newspapers would have been filled with little else. It would have been a powerful sign that we live in a radically different world.

Instead, we saw something only slightly less dramatic: the economic takeover of Greece. Yet because it was economic instead of military, only a few are giving it the attention they should.

This July saw a clear, naked display of German aggression—one of the worst since World War ii. Germany has been ruling the eurozone for years; earlier this year Der Spiegel even called it the new “Fourth Reich.” But for the most part, it has concealed its dominance behind a fig leaf of consensus.

In this economic takeover, however, Germany stopped camouflaging its power.

The Death of Democracy

The EU Observer noted, “Monday, July 13, will go down in history as the day Greece lost its independence after 185 years of freedom, the day democracy died in the country that invented it …” (July 13).

Just over a week before, Greece had held a referendum. The voice of the Greek people was loud and clear: Greece would not submit to German hegemony. On July 13, Germany ignored the referendum and unilaterally imposed its will on the Greek government

Though they don’t fully appreciate the importance of what has happened here, the mainstream media now sees what the Trumpet has been warning about for years. Greece is now a German colony. Here are some of the conditions Greece must now submit to:

• European Union officials have veto power over new Greek laws.
• The Greek government must repeal laws the EU officials do not like.
• €50 billion (us$54.5 billion) worth of assets are to be taken from Greece and given to an independent fund. The fund will then sell them off.
• Greece must reform pension and tax laws in line with what EU officials want.
• The government must commit to automatic spending cuts if it isn’t making enough money.

These are the major changes. You could argue that some of them are good. But what you cannot argue is that Greece is still a sovereign nation! It is now merely a puppet state.

This takeover has major implications for you and for the future of your world.

More Than Just Greece

This economic invasion was an attack on Greece, but also a warning to the rest of Europe of what will happen if any other nation tries to defy the German line.

Wolfgang Münchau went so far as to say that Europe has “reverted to the nationalist European power struggles of the 19th and early 20th century.” He wrote in Britain’s Financial Times: “They demoted the eurozone into a toxic fixed exchange-rate system, with a shared single currency, run in the interests of Germany, held together by the threat of absolute destitution for those who challenge the prevailing order. The best thing that can be said of the weekend is the brutal honesty of those perpetrating this regime change ….

“This was the real coup over the weekend: not only regime change in Greece, but also regime change in the eurozone” (emphasis added throughout).

Germany’s rule extends far beyond Greece. In many ways, these draconian punishments were not about Greece. Greece’s economy and debt are too small to cause a real problem for Germany. The real issue is Spain, Portugal, Italy, even France—the large EU economies that could cause Germany real problems. Greece tried to defy Germany, and Germany had to make an example of it. Now these other debtor states are far less likely to oppose the German will. If they try, they know they will suffer the same fate.

“The Germans made an example of Cyprus and now Greece,” Stratfor’s ceo George Friedman wrote. “The leading power of Europe will not underwrite defaulting debtors. It will demand political submission for what help is given. This is not a message that will be lost in Europe …” (July 14).

German-Foreign-Policy.com noted the lack of any serious resistance from France or Italy to the Greek deal, writing that these nations “are competing for admission in a northern European core Europe, whose membership will be decided by Berlin, in the case of a possible collapse of the European Union” (July 15).

Much earlier in this crisis, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “European nations fear economic collapse. Now they are looking to Germany as their financial savior. But they are going to get a lot more than a financial savior!” He went on to say, “Those nations that can’t or won’t comply will be kicked out of the European Union!” (May-June 2009).

That is exactly what we saw in Greece this summer. Included in Germany’s threat to kick out Greece was an implicit threat to the rest of the eurozone.

A New Germany

As well as a radically different eurozone, we are also seeing a radically different Germany. The Germany of five or ten years ago would not have acted this openly. “The Germans have long been visible as the controlling entity of the European Union,” wrote Friedman. “This time, they made no bones about it. Nor did they make any bones about their ferocity. In effect they raised the banner of German primacy, German national interest, and German willingness to crush the opposition” (op. cit.).

The negotiations were all carried out within the context of the eurozone—but it was clearly Germany driving it all. Why?

The Greek crisis directly threatened Germany. It backed Germany into a corner. The Greek government tried to use the referendum to force Berlin to forgive its debt. If it had gotten its way, then the Germans would have ultimately have lost hundreds of billions of euros as all the other southern European countries used the same techniques to get their debt written off too. As Germany viewed it, a forceful response was necessary.

“Greece invoked its sovereign right, and Germany responded by enforcing an agreement that compelled the Greeks to cede those rights,” wrote Friedman. “It was not the government’s position that troubled Germany the most, but the Greek referendum” (op. cit.). He referred to Germany’s move an “attack” on Greece’s national sovereignty. “The Germans could not accommodate the vote. They had to respond by demanding concessions on Greek sovereignty,” Friedman wrote.

They acted in a way that every German government since World War ii has avoided acting. “[T]he Germans did something they never wanted to do: Resurrect fairly unambiguously the idea that Germany is the sovereign and dominant nation-state in Europe, and that it has the power and the will to unilaterally impose its will on another nation,” Friedman continued.

In doing this, Germany broke with France. There wasn’t even a pretense of Franco-German leadership. It was clearly all German. “[T]he final negotiation was an exercise of unilateral German power,” wrote Friedman (ibid).

The world may be shocked by the harshness that Chancellor Angela Merkel demonstrated. But a lot of German voters wanted her to be even stronger! After the vote, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble publicly broke with Merkel over the bailouts for the first time over this crisis. He said Greece should have been booted out of the euro.

There is real pressure on Chancellor Merkel to be even harsher in the future. There was a lot of dissatisfaction over Greece’s earlier bailout in 2012, but when it came to voting, only around a dozen of her party members opposed it. This time it was 60.

The Flaw at the Heart of the Euro

To understand what is coming, it’s important to understand the real cause of the Greek crisis. There is a lot of anger, especially in southern Europe, directed against Germany now. It is often called a Nazi state. Merkel is often portrayed as Hitler or a concentration camp guard.

That is unfair. As easy as it is to sympathize with the Greeks losing their sovereignty, it is also easy to sympathize with the German taxpayers. No nation would be happy about handing over taxpayers’ money to a foreign state. The German taxpayers are also victims here.

The real villains are the elites who designed the euro knowing it would lead to exactly this outcome. Many of these elites were German—though most were not elected government officials.

The eurozone is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. At one time, this may have been a controversial statement—but we see clear proof of it now in Greece. The elites who designed the euro knew it would lead us here.

A common currency binds nations closely together. Reckless spending (and lending) in one affects all the others. Worse, economic policy helpful to one country causes major problems to others. The eurozone ran an economic policy that aided its biggest economy, Germany. But that spelled disaster for economies that were very different from Germany’s.

Predictably, in 2008, Greece experienced a crisis that threatened to break up the whole eurozone. So the EU—mostly Germany—bailed Greece out. That immediately created a new problem. German taxpayers were now lending their money to Greece. Quite naturally, they wanted a say in how Greece managed its finances in order to ensure they would be repaid. At the same time, and also quite understandably, the Greeks weren’t very keen on being told what to do by the Germans.

A common currency automatically leads to some states having a say in how other states are governed. That is simply the way it has to be. A common currency will always mean bailouts and shared risk. In America, this happens democratically: All 50 states agree that the other states get to vote for the federal government, which makes the rules for all states. They also agree that there is a central pool of tax money that all states pay in to and get paid out of.

In Greece this never happened, so instead they find themselves forced against their will to submit to German dictates. It is fair to neither Greeks nor German taxpayers. European law explicitly states that bailouts are illegal. This law was simply ignored as soon as bailouts became necessary. European elites hid the reality that a common currency would require a common European government.

This flaw at the heart of the euro gives us a good idea of what is coming next.

Dominated by Germany

The eurozone still has no strong common government. There is no mechanism for rich nations to give power to the poorer. Without this, Greece and the rest of southern Europe are locked in a common currency with the world’s premier exporting powerhouse: Germany. There is simply no way they can compete without outside help. Money will flow out of southern Europe into Germany, causing more crises and more needs for bailouts.

Until there is a common government, crises will continue. But Berlin has the money. It won’t allow the formation of this common government unless it comes on Germany’s terms.

Its terms may be too harsh for some, and we will probably see some nations quit the euro. The result will be a core Europe dominated by Germany.

Even those outside the core will be dominated—even subjugated—by Germany in the end. Nations like Greece and Cyprus are in key strategic locations, and Germany won’t let them go.

We will probably see more battles for Greece. For now, Germany dominates it. The Greeks will chaff under this dominance and may challenge Berlin yet again. The result will probably be an even more forceful crackdown.

This is simply the economic destiny of the euro. It has been from its creation.

“[T]he EU quite deliberately created the most dangerous credit bubble of all: emu [Economic Monetary Union],” wrote former civil servant Bernard Connolly, author of The Rotten Heart of Europe, well before the euro crisis. “And, whereas the mission of the Fed is to avoid a financial crisis, the mission of the ecb [European Central Bank] is to provoke one. The purpose of the crisis will be, as [Romano] Prodi, then Commission president, said in 2002, to allow the EU to take more power for itself. The sacrificial victims will be, in the first instance, families and firms (and banks and investors) in countries such as Ireland …. Subsequently, German savers (or British taxpayers) will bear the burden of bailouts that a newly empowered ‘EU economic government’ will ordain.”

This is still the thinking of European elites today. In 2012, then U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with Schäuble. He wrote that Schäuble told him that “a Grexit would be traumatic enough that it would help scare the rest of Europe into giving up more sovereignty to a stronger banking and fiscal union. The argument was that letting Greece burn would make it easier to build a stronger Europe with a more credible firewall” (Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises).

No Choice But to Integrate

City A.M., a British business newspaper, wrote that “for the single currency to survive over the longer term, euro countries will have to integrate further, involving greater fiscal and political coordination. If this doesn’t happen, the eurozone will disintegrate” (July 14).

“Despite the short-term costs of keeping Greece inside, eurozone leaders have shown themselves to be unwilling to accept disintegration,” it continued. “So the logical conclusion is that further integration must follow.”

Since the latest Greek crisis, more and more EU leaders have been calling for this kind of integration. Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the European Parliament, tweeted, “We have to learn from this Greek thriller. A currency union without a political union isn’t sustainable. Let’s change Europe now.” French President François Hollande called for the eurozone to develop its own government, parliament and budget, with a smaller group of nations starting immediately, leading the way.

The creation of the euro was a diabolically brilliant strategy. It forces the reluctant European nations together. At the same time, German elites and European bureaucrats get the German population behind them. Ordinarily German voters wouldn’t be keen on a takeover of Greece. But because they see it as key to their economic prosperity and to keeping their tax money, they are generally in favor and even calling for harsher measures.

The new European superstate that the euro crisis is forcing can’t help but radically change the world. This is about a third superpower, distinct and independent from both America and Russia.

Germany leading a core group of nations with a common government is more than just economic destiny. History and geography—and prophecy—warn us of the same outcome.

A Warning From History

Probably no one is as good at marshaling history and geography to forecast world events as George Friedman. “Any country located in the middle of the northern plain of Europe will be important, whether fragmented, as it was during the Holy Roman Empire, or united,” he writes in his book Flashpoints.

Friedman describes the genuine desire within Germany to avoid a repeat of World War ii. “German intentions are to have an economic policy without political, and certainly without military, consequences,” he writes. “They intend to be the dominant power in Europe without imposing their will on anyone.

“This is an understandable impulse,” he writes. “It is not clear that it is practical.” He wrote that before the last phase of the Greek crisis. He has already been proven right.

“The fourth-largest economy in the world does not have the option of avoiding politics,” he warns. “Everything that happens in the world might affect its interests, and certainly everything that happens in Europe will affect Germany.” German voters are realizing this. Ten years ago, they would have vigorously opposed such strong action from their government. Now they are encouraging it. If Chancellor Merkel had simply handed money over to the Greeks without demanding concessions, her chancellorship would not last long. Germany is a rich power, and “Wealth without strength is an invitation to disaster,” Friedman writes. In time, he says, Germany will see that wealth taken away or use “its vast resources to transform wealth into power” (emphasis added throughout).

“Germany will face stark choices, and increasing its strength in all dimensions will become more bearable than the alternatives,” Friedman writes. “Germany will therefore become a full-fledged power, first flexing its political muscles”—as we just saw in Greece—“and in time its military ones as pressures develop.”

“Germany has nothing but psychological bars to rearming itself,” he writes. “But the truth is that no nation is fully sovereign without weapons, and whatever Germany’s memories and nightmares, the idea of perpetual peace is a dream. A prosperous economic life without needing to protect it is not sustainable.”

This is what a geopolitical and historical analysis forecasts: Germany, as a major military power, dominating Europe. No matter how reluctant German voters may have been in the past, their nation is reverting to its old mind-set of aggressively defending its interests.

There have long been those in Germany who wanted the nation to play this powerful role. Over the last few years, Der Spiegel—one of Germany’s most popular magazines—has done some excellent work exposing the extent to which ex-Nazis infiltrated the postwar government. The American government has published intercepted secret documents showing top German industrialists committing themselves to rebuild a Nazi empire. Yet 60 years on, Germany has not launched another world takeover bid. Whenever Germany has acted with strength, like the Balkans, for example, it has always avoided the limelight, hiding behind nato or the EU. Why?

These elites never had the German voters behind them. Germany was devastated by World War ii. Unlike after World War i, the nation was so comprehensively defeated that it lost its appetite for war. Even today, military spending is unpopular with most German voters.

For 60 years, ambitious German leaders have been unable to win voters’ support for a vision of great German power. But by creating the euro crisis, they are changing that. If German voters see that German might, even armed German might, is the only way to keep them safe and prosperous, they will support it. That is exactly what we saw this summer.

As Friedman points out, even without the euro crisis, geopolitical reality alone means Germany cannot be both rich and militarily weak. Sooner or later, a dangerous world will force German voters to change. The euro crisis is making this happen right now. German elites have created a crisis that finally gets voters behind their vision for German power.

But there is a more reliable source of warning for what comes next. Geopolitical analysis is helpful, but has its limitations.

Your Surest Guide to the Future

Friedman writes that “[i]n 1945 very few would have imagined the Germany of the 21st century, and those who did would have been terrified.”

Yet Herbert W. Armstrong forecast exactly this outcome. Even before the end of World War ii, he forecast that Germany would dominate Europe again. On May 9, 1945, he even said that this would happen through “a European union.”

In August 1950, Herbert Armstrong predicted that “the world will be stunned, dumbfounded, to see Germany emerge suddenly in a power never equaled by Hitler—by a union of 10 nations in Europe, probably including some at present puppets of Russia—in a gigantic United States of Europe. … Soon the ‘United States of Europe’ will emerge, with Germany at its head” (Plain Truth).

Those “puppets of Russia” are now part of the EU! We don’t yet see the union of 10 nations—that is coming—but we see Germany clearly as Europe’s head.

More recently, in his booklet Germany’s Conquest of the Balkans, Mr. Flurry wrote, “It will not be long before Europe is reunited as the Holy Roman Empire. It will be led very assertively by Germany.”

That book was first published in 1999. It is full of statements that would have seen controversial at the time, but are now all over your newspapers. “The historical plan of the European Union was to control a dangerous Germany. But it is clear that Germany is controlling the EU!” wrote Mr. Flurry.

His statement that “it is now the politics of Germany that powerfully influence politics in all Europe,” is now so obvious it appears tame.

He also wrote: “Notice what Sir Winston Churchill said, May 31, 1935: ‘Everywhere these countries are being made to look to Germany in a special way.’ And today all of Europe is looking to Germany in a special way.” Today, no one would dispute that.

What these men wrote decades ago is coming to pass right now. What they forecast for the time ahead aligns with what the leaders of Europe, economic experts and top news analysts also predict.

How are they so right?

Their forecasts were based on Bible prophecy. That is not a fashionable news source. But you can’t afford to ignore it, given how right these prophecies are proving to be. The Bible forecasts a power dominated by Germany and made up of a group little smaller than today’s eurozone. This superpower will be “partly strong, and partly broken”—a conglomeration of different nations (Daniel 2:42).

This is exactly what many of today’s experts predict for Europe.

You need to know what the Bible says about the future of this power. For a step-by-step explanation, request our free booklet Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast?

The rise of this new German power is “one of the most significant moments ever in the history of Europe,” Mr. Flurry wrote. You cannot afford to be ignorant about what is happening in Europe and where it is leading.