Shades of Hitler
In his first broadcast to the British people after becoming their wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill, surveying the Nazi onslaught, rallied his nation to begin the task of rescuing “a group of shattered states and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians—upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall” (quoted by Martin Gilbert, Descent into Barbarism).
Strong words—fighting words! The words of the political leader of the century—a defiant response to the onslaught of Hitler and his Nazi cohorts as the German army cut a bloody swath across Europe.
Expulsion the Penalty for War
As we know, the Allies turned the tide of war and, within five years of the shattering of those European nations by Hitler’s regime, gained the victory. In the ensuing peace, Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia and Poland, both as a penalty for the Nazis’ crimes and as surety that they would never be “shattered” nor “bludgeoned” again by their German neighbor. At the time this seemed more than reasonable, given that one of Hitler’s staff officers, Col. Eduard Wagner, had penned in his diary following a meeting with Hitler, “It is the Führer’s and Goering’s intention to destroy and exterminate the Polish nation” (ibid.).
Yet, a little over six decades from the Nazi blitzkrieg of Europe, do we remember how it all started? It started with Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland and Poland!
The Sudetenland is a region within Czechoslovakia which had a majority German-speaking population up to the time of their expulsion by the Czechs following Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War ii. In Poland, during the war, “It was intended by the masters in Berlin that within a decade, vast regions hitherto with Polish majorities would become ‘pure and Germanic provinces’” (ibid.).
But, as was the case with Czechoslovakia, the peace concluded by the Allies via the Potsdam conference in July-August 1945 specifically demanded the removal of Germans from Polish territory. At the time, the division of territory by the victorious Allies and the expulsion of German people from Czech and Polish territory was a deliberate strategy to protect Europe from ever again suffering from domination by Germany.
But that is not how certain German leaders view the situation in the 21st century. Witness the strident words of Edmund Stoiber, opposition candidate for the German chancellorship: “If, in the year 2002, anyone defends acts of expulsion and denial of rights which happened over 57 years ago, then they must be prepared for all Europeans to question whether they are ready to be part of Europe” (Deutsche Welle, May 21).
Sound good? Well, that may be until you realize about whom Stoiber was speaking. It all hearkens back to a resolution passed by the German parliament in the run-up to the federal elections of 1998.
“The joint Czech-German Declaration, signed in January 1997, promised that the two countries ‘will not burden their relations with political and legal questions arising from the past.’ On May 29, an election-conscious German federal parliament, the Bundestag, put the past back on the front burner by approving a resolution that calls on prospective members of the European Union to recognize the right of Germans expelled after World War ii to settle freely in their former homelands” (Prague Post, June 3, 1998).
This resolution was passed in flagrant defiance of the 1997 joint Czech-German Declaration, because it unquestionably burdened the two countries’ relations with “political and legal questions arising from the past”! Why deliberately drag up the past in a seemingly glaring reflection of Hitler’s old dictum that such written agreements are “just made to be broken”?
Very simply, the Germans’ historic lust for an eastward land grab can simply no longer be contained.
Just 12 years on from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, the territorial advancement of Germany, under the guise of their European Union membership, is quite startling. Already having overseen the beating of the Balkans into submission to EU rule by the old policy of divide and conquer, Germany, feeling its newly regenerated oats, is straightforward about its claim to the territory it previously occupied under Nazi rule.
The point is, the territory in question was deliberately placed out of Germany’s orbit as part of the peace negotiations ostensibly designed, in the Allies’ terms, to prevent the German nation from ever again posing a threat to Europe and the world.
Human beings have short memories. In this dumbed-down, anti-history, politically correct 21st century, it seems our collective memory is very short indeed.
Importance of History
Consider the history of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Czechoslovakia (now dissected into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) existed as a sovereign nation between the two world wars. Yet, under relentless pressure from Hitler, the appeasing British and French leaders, Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Deladier, simply caved in to the demonic demands of the Nazi Führer for the seizure of the Czech Sudetenland. Although this region was populated by German-speaking people, unlike other regions such as Danzig and the Saar, which were part of imperial Germany prior to its defeat in 1918, the Sudetenland was never part of Germany. It was formerly part of Austria-Hungary.
Thus, Hitler’s first grab eastward for territorial expansion was tantamount to the seizure of foreign land!
At the Munich Conference on September 29, 1938, Hitler couched his claim to the Sudetenland in most threatening terms: “If the Czechs were foolish enough to resist the Munich Agreement by force, he told Chamberlain, he would ‘try to spare the civilian population and to confine himself to military objectives.’ Hitler added that he ‘hated the idea of little babies being killed by gas bombs’” (Gilbert, op. cit.).
As Chamberlain returned to Britain, waving a copy of the Munich Agreement gifting the Sudetenland to Germany, Winston Churchill’s ire could not be contained: “The partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western democracies to the Nazi threat of force. … It is not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced, but also the freedom and the democracy of all nations. The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion” (quoted by Gilbert, Winston Churchill, vol. 5; emphasis mine throughout).
The old war horse’s words were soon to prove most exact in their vision for the immediate future, as the ebullient Hitler, flushed with gaining the upper hand on the Western Allies, fixed his beady eyes on Poland. On September 1, 1939, he unleashed the Luftwaffe over Warsaw and bombed and cannoned Poland into subservience to the Nazi regime. The grave delusion of the appeasing Allies was shattered.
From Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland and his rape of Poland sprung the greatest global conflict the world has ever known—the conflagration of the Second World War.
Enter Stoiber
Sixty-three years later, enter Edmund Stoiber—Bavarian, Catholic, politically unpredictable, ultra conservative, friend of right-wing Austrian politician Jorg Haider, and, when he deems appropriate, a flatterer supreme. Stoiber currently heads the polls as he and Chancellor Schröder head toward the September 22 elections for the German chancellorship.
In the runup to this election, Stoiber is busy reinventing himself from his regional focus as prime minister of Bavaria to reflect a national image calculated to appeal to the presently restless and dissatisfied German public. The economically destabilized Germans long for a leader who can truly unite the nation still healing from the Cold War split between its eastern and western regions. They long for cohesion and stability throughout the four-year term of the next chancellorship.
Stoiber’s campaign is calculated to revive German unity on three fronts. “Politicians in the middle of a personal and political transformation are always difficult to read. Herr Stoiber’s appeal to many Germans is that, in common with Herr Kohl, he has strong regional roots and believes in God, the family and traditional values. Like Kohl, he has a clear sense of the German interest” (Times, Aug. 5).
Perhaps that doesn’t sound too bad, unless you realize the perspective within which Stoiber “believes in God, the family and traditional values.” Those beliefs were finely honed under one Franz Josef Strauss, commonly called “the strong man of Europe,” who was Stoiber’s Bavarian mentor. That God is a very Catholic God, that family is very Teutonic, and those traditional values hearken back to the heritage of Otto the Great’s Holy Roman Empire! They are, in fact, the particular God, the type of family and traditional values that will soon be embraced in a federal European constitution. And that is a very different type of God, family and values to those of the Anglo-American democracies!
But what is of real and most immediate and direct concern in Stoiber’s campaign for leadership is that degree to which he and others involved in his campaign have swung powerfully into action to activate a process that will end with Germany once again dominating the Sudetenland and taking over Poland!
This time it is not via threat to appeasing diplomatic representations of foreign governments, as it was in the case of Hitler’s Munich Agreement on the seizure of the Sudetenland. Nor is it by sending the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht into Poland—yet. This time the blitzkrieg is a powerful lightning war of words! Words which half a century ago no sane person would have ever hoped to hear again from the mouth of a German politician!
“Addressing the ‘East Prussia Congress’ in Leipzig on June 23 … Stoiber has called on Poland to rescind the decrees which expelled Germans from Danzig, Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia in 1945. … Stoiber spoke constantly of reconciliation—while harshly attacking the hostility of the Czechs to any suggestion that the Benes decrees [which decreed the expulsion of Germans and assumption of the land they occupied at the conclusion of World War ii] be rescinded …. This was because, while praising the firm stand the European Parliament had taken on the issue of the Benes decrees, Stoiber effectively told the Poles to rescind their decrees too. He said that all Germans from the East, including those from East Prussia, must be accorded the ‘right to their homeland.’ He said, ‘The post-war period in Europe will be ended only when the injustice of expulsion is contractually expunged, for the reconciliation and common good of both sides. … If the European Parliament’s report says, “Enlargement of the EU must close the wounds of historical events,” then we must address the question of the decrees by which the Germans were expelled and deprived of their rights’” (European Foundation Intelligence Digest, June 2002).
EU Cloak
That is how the German leaders, intent on reviving their nation as a dominant world power, have consistently used the cloak of this European Union to pursue their own ends under the veil of the 12-star flag of the rising Eurobeast. More and more we see the prophetic words of Margaret Thatcher being fulfilled on the European continent. “You have not anchored Germany to Europe. You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany. In the end, my friends, you’ll findit will not work” (Gazette Telegraph, Oct. 10, 1995).
One of the most detailed expositions of the repetition of history that is progressively revealing itself via the German domination of the European Union is Rodney Atkinson’s Fascist Europe Rising. A British political economist and adviser to ministers of government, Mr. Atkinson cuts to the quick of the German question in relation to that nation’s current grab for the Sudetenland and Poland in unique, biting form. Following is an excerpt from his book, commenting on a motion proposed by the then-governing parties in Germany, the Christian Democrats (cdu) and the Free Democrats, passed by the German government on July 7, 1998.
“The motion was ‘Refugees, evacuees and German minorities are a bridge between the Germans and their eastern neighbors.’ My translation … is followed by my comments. The motion reads as follows:
“‘The expansion of the European Union to the east represents for Germany and for the whole of Europe a great opportunity.’
“Note which comes first—Germany, which shows the use of ‘Europe’ not as a means of suppressing German nationalism but as a means of promoting German national interests. …
“‘Step by step we are thus approaching the common goal of a lasting and just peace for the whole of Europe.’
“Most Europeans had assumed this was achieved in 1945 after the defeat of the Nazis—or at least in 1989 after the defeat of communism—but not so apparently for a still agitating German political class. …
“‘Today we see how the Charter of the German Expellees of August 5, 1950, has become reality. In this charter the expellees, a few years after war, flight and expulsion, declared their support for a Europe “in which the peoples can live without fear.”‘
“This is precisely why the Poles, Czechs and others who had suffered from both the Kaiser and the Nazis’ aggression, persecution and murder, drove out the German minorities, who had collaborated in that persecution, in the first place.”
It is intriguing to note how Stoiber seizes on the results of the Balkan destabilization, sparked by Germany’s peremptory, singular, unilateral recognition of Croatia and Slovenia as separate and sovereign nation-states, in 1991, and uses that to justify his ends regarding the impending land grab by Germany in the Czech Republic and Poland.
“‘Expulsion and ethnic cleansing must nowhere be part of the existing legal order,’ Stoiber said [in his speech to the East Prussia Congress]. He undertook to see that this would happen—i.e. that the decrees would be rescinded—if he becomes German chancellor on September 22. He went on, ‘East Prussia, like Silesia and Pomerania are on the way to becoming European regions.’ He said that these regions should be ‘ever more opened, ever more Europeanized’ and, in effect, called for the affairs of these regions to be run jointly by Poles and Germans” (op. cit., European Foundation Intelligence Digest).
On this score—a position long adopted by the cdu (Stoiber’s party)— Rodney Atkinson is most condemning. “In all these calls for the peaceful coexistence of minorities in a united Eurostate we must be aware of how, historically and during the 1980s and 1990s, Germany undermined and destroyed the multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia, recognized Slovenia, its wartime fascist puppet Croatia then rearmed and helped the ‘Kosovo Liberation Army’ in its attempt to wrest a part of Serbia from Serbian control and finally sending troops and planes for ‘peacekeeping’ bombing runs in a war which they had instigated” (op. cit.).
Note the following declaration adopted by the German Parliament back in 1998, and Atkinson’s intuitive summation on the Teutonic motivation which it embraces.
“‘The German Parliament therefore shares the approach of the federal government—and indeed all other post-war governments—which has always seen the post-war expulsion of Germans from their historical homelands a great injustice and illegal. The parliament calls on the government to continue its dialogue with the governments of our eastern neighbors and stand up for the interests of the expellees.’
“Now we see in more aggressive language what all the friendship, cooperation, cultural exchange and ‘united Europe’ really adds up to. It is apparently perfectly legal for Serbs to be driven out of their own country but not for Germans out of other people’s countries” (ibid.).
Déjà Vu
Do we get the point? Stop and really think about this for a moment. Just 64 years ago, a German nation, unified and militarized under one demented strong man, aggressively stole part of Czechoslovakia’s sovereign territory. Just 63 years ago, the same aggressive German leadership stole the whole nation of Poland and occupied it under the Nazi bootheel with the intention of wiping it off the map!
Only five years ago, Germany’s most powerful right-wing political party pushed through a motion in the German Parliament claiming the right to territory which was taken from German control by the Allies with the intention that, in the interests of maintaining peace in Europe, it never, ever be occupied by Germany again!
This very year, election year in Germany, the nation’s leading candidate for the office of chancellor promises that, should he gain office, he will work on the seizure of the Sudetenland and the “Prussian” bits of Poland!
This is an outright reversal of the intent behind the peace concluded at Potsdam by the Allied nations which defeated Nazi Germany in World War ii. Edmund Stoiber propounds the German government’s conviction that a just peace for the global war that Nazi Germany started cannot be concluded until territories deliberately taken from them to guarantee a lasting and just peace are given back to the once-vanquished enemy of Western democracy. Can you really believe this?
In his speech in Leipzig in June, Stoiber underscored where his ultimate interests lie in his dream of gaining the leadership of the German nation. He ended the speech (unwittingly endorsing Margaret Thatcher’s prediction of 1995) by “committing himself to the defense of German interests” (op. cit., European Foundation Intelligence Digest).
For over 50 years, Herbert W. Armstrong proclaimed that Germany would rise to lead a European world power stronger than the Anglo-American nations and Russia. He declared that this time, their third attempt in modern times at global domination, Germany would first mount an economic, financial and corporate blitzkrieg before instituting a singular federal currency and finally a huge federal military force.
“For more than 30 years I have been telling our radio audiences, and readers of the Plain Truth, about what is rising up, now, in Europe!” he wrote. “The Roman Empire is actually being resurrected. The Common Market is bringing Europe’s nations back together. Soon it will become a political-military empire! It will be a third great world power—equal to, or stronger than, either Russia or the U.S.A!” (Co-worker letter, March 5, 1964).
Germany’s global financial and economic domination is well advanced. This year most EU nations placed the federal euro currency in circulation and withdrew their sovereign national currencies. The fledgling Euroforce, precursor of a European military force to ultimately number in excess of 2 million uniformed personnel, is on target for its launch next year.
Now, in this first decade of the 21st century, comes the time when, beginning to feel the newfound weight of its leadership of the world’s newest and rising superpower (the European Union), Germany once again reaches east, preparing for the seizure of the Sudetenland and parts of Poland. This is but a repetition of the history of 1938 and 1939, the only variation being the means by which it is being carried out.
The burning question is, will the pending seizure of sovereign Czech and Polish land by Germany have an immediate result in common with that in Hitler’s day? Believe it or not, Bible prophecy declares yes, it will. But this time it will be the Allies, Anglo-America in particular, that will suffer from blitzkrieg occupation!
We had better be aware that, whereas the world may perceive plenty of petty Hitlers on the scene today, it lacks even one leader of the capacity of Winston Churchill to stand up in the defense of freedom from totalitarian rule.
Where Is the Warning?
Sixty-four years ago, the Western democracies did have a watchman. Decried by his own people as having had his day, thrust out into the political wilderness for a decade, Churchill was returned to office as Britain’s prime minister at that nation’s and the world’s most crucial time in all history. For the second time in less than 30 years, this time led by his fearless leadership, the free world was rescued from certain tyranny.
But where is that watchman today, on the eve of the third round of tyrannical threat to the English-speaking peoples and indeed the whole of the free world? Where is the voice of courage, of faith, of unswerving commitment to that which is right, to absolute justice and freedom for all? Where is the voice of true peace in this world’s final hour of need? Search the seats of Parliament and Congress, search for the honest, the uncompromising, the staunchly loyal, the leader of impeccable character, untouched by the tarnish of fraud and malfeasance in this turgidly immoral society of the West in decline. Where are they? In prevailing political leadership we simply draw a blank.
Yet, there is one lone voice. Just onevoice, even as the Eternal God promised there always would be. One voice in a wilderness of confusion, declaring, with increasing power, that which shall be—declaring the reason for this world’s current ills and the solution to them—declaring a strident warning of what lies ahead if mankind refuses to repent of its present sinful ways.
God, whose word cannot be broken (John 10:35), has declared that “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). We who support the publication of this magazine simply take God at His word, for we know that one voice by which He is declaring His prophecies at this very moment! You need to know that voice and to heed it! The future welfare of you, your wife, your husband, your children, your family depends on your heeding that voice and responding to it!
And there’s precious little time to do that before history repeats itself not only in the Czech Republic, not only in Poland, but in your country, your state, your province, your town—but this time with powerfully more devastating results! Write for your copy of our booklet, free of charge, titled Nahum: An End-Time Prophecy for Germany, and heed that voice which declares your future now! This will help you prepare today, in advance of the events soon to engulf this planet, in anticipation of the time of breathtaking peace, beauty and joy which will finally subsume all wars and rumors of wars under the beneficent rule of the King of kings, the Prince of peace and Savior of mankind, Jesus Christ, Son of God!
