On the March

“You’ve come a long way, baby.” So goes the 1989 Virginia Slims jingle for the “women’s own” cigarette. The advertisement contained the usual warning about the contents of the cigarette package having the potential to cause death to the consumer.

The same phrase could apply to the rapid rise of the military power of the nation that instigated the most recent world war. But this package does not carry with it an explicit warning that its contents have the potential and proven history to pose death to countless millions. In fact, the world has been sold the message that its death-dealing potential is a thing of the past. This makes its return to favor ever so much more dangerous.

On January 16, Germany’s military force, the Bundeswehr, issued a statement indicating that 250 German troops will be deployed to Afghanistan with a specific combat role. Social Democratic Party chief defense spokesman Rainer Arnold “announced that the German army had begun making preparations for the deployment … adding that the mission, slated to start in July, signaled a ‘new quality’ in the German engagement in Afghanistan. Part of the new mission could include pursuing terrorists ….”

The size of this combat force may seem small. Yet that has been the history of the German military’s return to power: softly, softly—little by little—lest we awaken old memories of darker days.

In fact, the German security and defense services have come a long way from their initial, tentative revival 50 years ago, with the aid of their benevolent English-speaking victors, to their new international peacekeeping role. Indeed, it appears from recent statements by certain German officials that, as other nations withdraw their troops from Afghanistan, Germany is positioned to take on even greater responsibilities in that theater.

The Bundeswehr also reported, “With 350 Norwegian troops leaving Afghanistan by the middle of the year and Germany heading nato’s International Security and Assistance Force (isaf) in the country’s north, it is likely that the Bundeswehr will have to replace the Norwegians. ‘If other countries are no longer available to do this task after September, then we will do it ourselves,’ the head of the German Federal Armed Forces Association, Bernhard Gertz, told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. ‘It’s in the interest of our own soldiers.’ In a separate interview with the daily Der Tagesspiegel, Gertz added: ‘It is clear that we will take over this task’” (ibid.).

History of Revival

Germany’s revived willingness to send troops into combat follows decades of treading lightly following Nazi atrocities. It is interesting to track the return of Germany, after it was vanquished in 1945, to its rearming by stealth with the support of the Western Allies beginning with the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1956. That was barely 10 years after the Allies had declared that never again would Germany be permitted to rearm and pose a threat to world peace.

During the ensuing decades, the Bundeswehr became one of the most efficient and best-supplied conventional armies on the Continent. (We say conventional because, despite several attempts to acquire atomic weaponry, these requests were denied.) However, German military forces were limited in scope by post-war constitutional restrictions and the constraints imposed on them via integration into the nato alliance.

That all changed with German unification in 1990.

German-Foreign-Policy.com reports, “Upon the end of negotiations for a peace treaty (the ‘2 + 4 treaty’) German troops moved forward to the western boundary of Poland (1990). The German military was still prohibited from the manufacture, possession or use of biological, chemical or atomic weapons, and the size of the Bundeswehr was limited (to a maximum of 345,000 persons). These restrictions did not, however, prevent military leaders from formulating far-reaching visions. With the issue of the ‘political guidelines for defense’ in 1992, the Bundeswehr left its earlier role as a ‘defensive force’ and laid claim to the role of the worldwide representative of a reunified, economically expanding Germany. According to the ‘guidelines,’ military means are a necessity in order to expand the ‘room for political action and the vigor with which German interests can be brought to bear internationally’” (emphasis mine throughout).

Under the new guidelines for the enhanced, post-unification role of the Bundeswehr, the whole pace and extent of German military activity picked up. As Germany’s eastern neighbors were progressively swallowed up by the European Union, Germany took the initiative to start training officers from those candidate countries, taking care to ensure that they depended on German military technology.

In the meantime, on Dec. 23, 1991, Germany unilaterally announced its recognition of the separatist states of Slovenia and Croatia when they 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 battles. It was all very predictable to anyone who knew Balkan history. The term “ethnic cleansing” is an English rendition of a term coined by Croatians in their attempt to wipe out the Serbians and other minority groups within their nation.

Repeating of History

The movers and shakers in the German government knew their history and had read the outcome of their actions well. The prize would be the capture of the crossroads of Europe—the Balkans. This 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 even footing the bill and handing the spoils to the German-dominated European Union!

The entire German initiative in the Balkans episode was created to destabilize the region—and then to invite nato forces to secure the peninsula—so the EU could then be handed the ongoing governance of the nation-states that once comprised Yugoslavia.

The plan worked—perfectly! Germany got what it wanted and more, as the Luftwaffe bombed military and civilian targets on the Balkan Peninsula under the nato umbrella.

The newly united Germany was blooded in battle.

Germany had broken the post-World War ii spell that had prevented it from entering active combat since its defeat by the Allies in 1945.

For his efforts, Germany’s military commander, Gen. Klaus Naumann, was elected in 1994 by nato’s chiefs of defense to the senior nato post of chairman of the North Atlantic Military Committee. He 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, 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 United States and Britain, at Germany’s behest, and at substantial cost to Deutschland’s old enemies.

Nuclear Capability?

A few years ago, Naumann sketched out his 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, Aug. 13, 2003).

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 would have been cold comfort for Germany’s Chancellor Merkel—who was already at odds with her vice chancellor and foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on numerous aspects of German foreign policy—surely they stirred the blood of the German High Command!

But that’s not all. The manifesto recommends that nato initiate a nuclear first-strike policy—and, unsurprisingly, Naumann supports it. “Proliferation is spreading and we have not too many options to stop it,” he said, adding that nato needed to show “there is a big stick that we might have to use if there is no other option” (ibid.).

“The nuclear first strike must be in the ‘quiver’ of every escalation strategy,” Naumann wrote in the study, titled “Toward a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World,” which discusses nato’s war preparedness. According to German Foreign Policy, the report “has been making the rounds in the EU since January” (February 25).

“The military study demands a totalization of the arsenals needed for first-strike capability. This is the only way for the usa, nato and the EU to secure their ‘escalation dominance.’ The nuclear first strike is literally referred to as ‘indispensable’” (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 hasn’t been.

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?

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?

But the Naumann strategy goes further. “As the military authors emphasize, it is only possible to escalate a war up to the nuclear level, if the population is in favor. ‘Debates’ on the home front that hamper the military effectiveness cannot be tolerated. ‘Operations’ for the purpose of maintaining defense preparedness could become indispensable, threaten the authors, implying media control. The objective is to use a ‘first-strike media strategy’ to take over the headlines” (ibid.).

Given the history of the last time such a recommendation was made by Germanic voices, the next statement is quite chilling. “The study proposes that a political directorate, comprised of the usa, nato and the EU, should control the entire social system. Several European capitals are examining the concept of what amounts to a military dictatorship for its feasibility” (ibid.).

That statement should scare all sensible Anglo-Saxons out of their wits!

Herbert W. Armstrong, well over half a century ago, not only prophesied Germany’s return to military dominance in Europe, but also predicted that the Anglo-Saxons would encourage this to the point of handing over weapons of their own manufacture—including nuclear weapons—to Germany’s control, only to find them ultimately turned back on themselves!

Beyond Europe

As in the past, the new German general staff has lost no time in working to develop a highly efficient military machine that, in the words of German-Foreign-Policy.com, “now controls an intervention force with continually modernized high-tech weaponry and special units (ksk). It is subject to secrecy. The wars in Yugoslavia, Macedonia and Afghanistan (including the engagement of the German navy off the coast of Africa in 2002) were test runs for the inner state of the Bundeswehr under conditions of battle. The German forces have risen to the point of rivaling the leading armies of Europe.”

Outside of Europe, the German military hierarchy is concentrating on deployment in Eurasia (using Afghanistan as a stepping stone), the Mediterranean and, increasingly, the continent of Africa. Each of these regions is crucial to the continuing development of Germany’s imperialist goals under the umbrella of the European Union. Securing access to oil, natural gas and raw materials nearby the European continent is the prime motive.

Out of the Germano-Vatican-instigated Balkan wars, there has developed a whole new philosophy to justify aggression of one nation against another. One of the most insightful observers of the rise of Germany to dominance within the European Union, British author John Laughland, recognized that in May 1999, “nato had attacked Yugoslavia on the basis that national sovereignty was no longer the basis of the international system, and that instead there existed a ‘right of humanitarian intervention’—a right for other states to bomb a country if they believe that human rights abuses are being committed there …. National sovereignty is explicitly cast aside. Many people are tricked into believing that this is a good thing because they believe that states should be prevented from committing abuses. This is true, of course, but the problem is that international organizations can commit abuses too, as nato unquestionably did in 1999. States are at least potentially subject to control by the populations over which they wield power; international organizations are never subject to any such control. Their power is therefore more, not less dangerous than that of nation states” (ibid., Feb. 18, 2007).

The European Union, courtesy of the Lisbon Treaty, is destined to have its own representative high commissioner, its own Ministry of Foreign Policy. It is destined to have its own diplomatic corps that will supersede the authority of the diplomats of its once-sovereign member nations. It is now slated to have its own security council, comprised of the seven member nations with the most powerful military forces, and ultimately to have its own EU combined military force, superseding, in authority of command, the individual general staff of each EU member nation’s previously sovereign military command.

And guess which nation is in the box seat to take on the leadership of the existing over 2-million-strong combined force that the EU potentially has at its disposal, under its High Command especially resurrected for that purpose.

Yes, the German military has come a long way since its crushing defeat in 1945 and the elimination of its High Command “forever.”

Prophetic Vision

But it was all so predictable. In 1945, even before the Allied victory over the Nazi regime, one lone voice was declaring that there were powers within Germany that had already planned for the resurgence of the German nation and military might in consequence of a defeat in World War ii. In a letter to his co-workers, dated Jan. 23, 1945, Herbert W. Armstrong had this to say: “But even though the Germans surrender, and we gain another armistice, it will be only another recess! The Nazis will go immediately underground—plotting and preparing World War iii. We shall fail to bring about world peace, because we do not know the way to world peace!

“More and more people all over this nation are beginning to see the stark, solemn, awful fate that is prophesied for this nation! It is a fate we can avoid—if, and only if—we repent of our sins—of our Baby _lonish customs and our ways contrary to God’s revealed laws, and turn unitedly to Almighty God for mercy, for protection, for help, for victory, and for peace!”

Does that sound strange to you?

Well, that’s what they thought of the One through whom those prophecies were originally delivered, and all who have since followed on preaching that message over the past two millennia. Yet the words of those prophecies about our nations are as ringingly true today as they were when they were originally received and declared. The only difference is that today we have irrefutable proof through major world events and the increasingly deteriorating conditions of our society as to their present-day reality!

Write for our booklet titled Nahum—An End-Time Prophecy for Germany, and learn more about this powerful nation and the role it is destined to play with increasingly high profile in the current decade and just beyond.