Without a knowledge of the history of Germany since its 19th-century unification under Count Otto von Bismark, coupled with the revelation of Bible prophecy relevant to the times through which we are living today, one would be hard-pressed to find a logic in current world events.

That’s where the Trumpet plays a major role. Check the archive on our website and you can trace any major event that has occurred over the past 15 years in relation to its historical and prophetic perspective.

Such is the case with nato.

We have written a good deal about this Western defense and security alliance since its first struggles to justify its ongoing existence following the great Soviet meltdown in 1990. Threaded through our reports and analyses has been one constant theme—the fact that a uniting Europe, increasingly dominated by a resurgent, united Germany, would use nato to further its own ends till the time came to assert its own unique military power in its own unique way, within its own chosen theaters of action.

So it is, as we paged through the new nato manifesto, due to be discussed at a heads of state and government summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in early April, that we were little surprised at the strong support given to certain elements of the manifesto by the senior German signatory to the document, former inspector general of the German military and nato Military Committee chairman, Gen. Klaus Naumann.

Before we look at those key elements of this latest nato manifesto, it’s worth looking at a little of Naumann’s history.

Born in the Bavarian city of Munich in 1939, Naumann joined the Bundeswehr immediately upon graduating from high school in 1958 to become a career soldier. Following his commission as a second lieutenant in the German artillery, Naumann rose through the officer ranks of the Bundeswehr, holding staff positions based in Bonn and Brussels, the latter as chief of the Military Policy, Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control section, attached to the staff of the German Military Representative to the nato Military Committee. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1986.

Klaus Naumann’s star really began to shine after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany that was its consequence. On Oct. 1, 1991, he was elevated to the position of chief of staff, Federal Armed Forces, and promoted to four-star general, holding that position until Feb. 14, 1996.

Consider the coincidence of General Naumann’s appointment as chief of staff of the German armed forces with the outbreak of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

There are indications that in 1989, President George H.W. Bush instigated a whispering campaign against Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of Britain at the time, to seek her ousting from the leadership of the British government. Mrs. Thatcher had been a thorn in the flesh of the European Union throughout her term as prime minister of Britain. This did not bode well with those who sought to expand the influence of the EU on the Continent, within the British opposition Labor Party and particularly with those turncoats within Thatcher’s own Conservative Party who were going behind her back, signing away British sovereignty piece by piece to the imperialist EU.

We quote from Adrian Hilton’s masterful expose of what resulted, in his book The Principality and Power of Europe:

Though such devious scheming may sound unacceptably Shakespearean in character, the reality of the plot to unseat Margaret Thatcher was corroborated by a publication sent to the offices of Intercessors for Britain in 1989, reporting the activities of the Bilderbergers, a group of industrialists, bankers and world politicians. A clandestine meeting in May of that year [1989] emphasized the need to bring down Mrs. Thatcher because of “her refusal to yield British sovereignty to the European superstate that is to emerge in 1992.” It was in the autumn of that year that the first attempt to remove her was made, and within 18 months [1991] she was gone.

With Thatcher out of the way, events moved swiftly.

On Dec. 23, 1991, Germany unilaterally announced its recognition of the separatist states of Slovenia and Croatia, which declared independence from the Republic of Yugoslavia. Shortly after, the Vatican also announced its official recognition of the breakaway states. The result was the start of the Balkan wars—horrible, bloody, dirty little wars that exploded across the entire Balkan Peninsula, deliberately provoked by Germany’s very first diplomatic initiative since the unification of East and West Germany only a year earlier.

The Balkan wars of the 1990s made fashionable the term “ethnic cleansing” as competing enclaves sought to eliminate each other in distinctive turf wars. It was all very predictable to anyone who knew Balkan history. The prime movers and shakers in the German government knew their history and had read the outcome well. The prize would be the capture of the veritable crossroads of Europe, possession of which would allow the EU to move aggressively eastward, right up to Russia’s doorstep, with the nato alliance not only fighting the wars that Germany had triggered, but they would even foot the bill and hand the spoils to the German-dominated European Union!

Chancellor Kohl’s government was prepared. The entire German initiative in the Balkans episode was created with the intent of destabilizing the region, then inviting the nato forces to secure the peninsula with the intent that the EU be then handed the ongoing governance of the nation-states that once comprised Yugoslavia.

It worked. Perfectly.

Germany got what it wanted, and more. And the reason it got more is because of Klaus Naumann.

In October 1991—the very month that a third state, Bosnia-Herzegovina, declared independence from Yugoslavia, provoking further war in the peninsula—Klaus Naumann was promoted to four-star general as chief of staff of Germany’s Federal Armed Forces. Under Naumann, German forces were able to taste combat operations in an international conflict for the first time since the Allies had gained victory over the Nazi regime in 1945. Naumann had the Luftwaffe bomb military and civilian targets on the Balkan Peninsula under the nato umbrella. The newly united Germany was blooded in battle.

For his efforts, Naumann was elected in 1994 to the senior nato post of chairman of the North Atlantic Military Committee by nato’s chiefs of defense. General Naumann assumed the appointment on Feb. 14, 1996—after the 1995 Dayton Accords that were to settle the wars instigated in the Balkans by German diplomatic action four years earlier. Through his military leadership and careful planning, Klaus Naumann had thrust the German military back to the forefront of combat in the process of supporting an illegal war, a war having no UN mandate, prosecuted by Germany’s old enemies, the U.S. and Britain, at Germany’s behest.

Since that moment, the German military forces have steadily stretched their remit to Afghanistan, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. This has all been in keeping with the Naumann military strategy for the new Germany.

A few years ago Naumann sketched out this vision thus: “This huge long-term task of stabilizing the entire region from North Africa through the Levant, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian Ocean is tomorrow’s challenge for Europeans and North Americans alike. Both have no alternative but to take it on shoulder to shoulder. This task should mark both nato’s new vision and nato’s new frontier” (World Security Network).

But the most startling public declaration to date to be made by any member, or retired member—as Naumann now is—of Germany’s modern armed forces, was made by Klaus Naumann in the context of the latest nato manifesto to which he was a prime contributor, and signatory.

According to the Guardian newspaper, “Naumann delivered a blistering attack on his own country’s performance in Afghanistan. ‘The time has come for Germany to decide if it wants to be a reliable partner.’ By insisting on ‘special rules’ for its forces in Afghanistan, the Merkel government in Berlin was contributing to ‘the dissolution of nato’” (January 22). Though these words will be cold comfort for Germany’s Chancellor Merkel, already at odds with her vice chancellor and foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on numerous aspects of German foreign policy, they will stir the blood of the German High Command!

But that’s not all.

Naumann’s most startling comments were reserved for the manifesto’s recommendation that nato initiate a nuclear first-strike policy. “Naumann conceded that the plan’s retention of the nuclear first-strike option was ‘controversial’ even among the five authors. … ‘Proliferation is spreading and we have not too many options to stop it. … nato needed to show ‘there is a big stick that we might have to use if there is no other option,’ he said” (ibid.).

Think on that. Germany’s top military strategist endorses a nuclear first-strike initiative for nato!

That ought to be big news!

But it won’t be.

Overshadowed by the Middle East, the Iraq war, the global economic meltdown, celebrity shenanigans and the U.S. presidential election, who wants to focus on this seemingly innocuous “peace oriented” European Union, and its all-too-willing lapdog, nato?

And who, really, would want to turn the spotlight on a peaceful, “democratized,” modern, united Germany and begin to analyze the military motives of its most senior armed forces spokesman?

Over the past 15 years, this magazine has continued to sound a very specific warning, the same warning that Herbert Armstrong constantly declared in his broadcasting and publishing effort over a 50-year period during the 20th century: that Germany will use nato, Anglo-American military technology and personnel to fight its battles at its own convenience for as long as it deems fit. Then, when conditions demand, it will simply turn our own weaponry, committed to its trust through such instrumentalities as nato, on us!

This is a grossly politically incorrect message. But it is the message of an ultimate realist! One who was imbedded in the ultimate, irrevocable reality of the revealed prophecies for today from the Word of God! It is the enduring message of Herbert W. Armstrong.

Read his words. If you don’t believe them, just remember them, for they are as sure today as they were 60 years ago when he loudly declared them to the world.

Less than 10 years after World War ii, Mr. Armstrong was able to reinforce his pre-war claims of a German revival to lead to a united Europe, claims he had made even as Germany lay in the ashes of ignominious defeat, in broadcasts that he made to the public in 1945 (Plain Truth, November/December 1954):

In February, 1945—just a few months before the end of the war—President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill announced the joint American-British policy on Germany. This was the solemn policy and warning for the future. Listen.Quote: “It is our inflexible purpose to destroy German militarism and Nazism and to insure Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world. We are determined to disarm and disband all German armed forces; break up for all time the German General Staff that has repeatedly contrived the resurgence of German militarism ….”And now, a short nine years later, behold the spectacle of Washington and London making every possible diplomatic effort, backed by American dollars, to do two things: create a United States of Europe, and to rearm Germany.

Herbert Armstrong made that observation over 50 years ago. Now we have Germany not only rearmed but having been deployed in a combat role in a war of its own making in the Balkans in the 1990s, and now on the verge of drafting a force to Afghanistan with a specifically combat-related brief. Not only that, we have Germany’s chief military strategist now touting for a nuclear first-strike capability for the EU’s lackey, nato.

Can we not predict the consequences of this whole unfolding series of events, given Germany’s history every single time it has been permitted to unite as a nation?

Do we not remember Margaret Thatcher’s warning that she made in October 1995 about allowing Germany to dominate a united Europe? “You have not anchored Germany to Europe; you have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany. In the end, my friends, you’ll find it will not work.”

Imagine—just imagine—nato, in the hands of a European command, going to war, even as it did in response to a German initiative in the 1990s, but this time with a nuclear first-strike option and a mandate to adopt “the use of force without UN Security Council authorization when ‘immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings’”? Those are words taken right out of the text of this current nato mandate!

That ought to scare us out of our wits!

How blind we are to history! Even blinder to Bible prophecy that forecast these very events millennia ago!

So where’s it all leading?

Request your copy, gratis, of Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet. It will not only answer that question, it will open your eyes to understand the true import of the dramatic events even now unfolding in Europe, the Middle East and the rest of the world, events that are destined to shape your life beyond belief!