German foreign policy is undergoing change.

Companies across the fatherland are facing serious shortages of vital raw materials. Up until recently, German industrialists have relied primarily upon China to supply their firms with the rare earth minerals needed to produce hi-tech equipment such as hybrid vehicles, cell phones, laptops, guided missiles and advanced electronics components. Now Chinese policy makers have decided to curtail rare earth exports to Europe, and German commodity brokers are racing for alternative sources.

In a conference of the Federation of German Industries held on October 26—just eight days after China announced its drastic reduction of rare earth exports—state secretaries from participating German ministries met with key German industrial leaders to discuss measures designed to open up new markets for needed minerals in hi-tech industries. Among the measures discussed was the possibility of establishing so-called raw materials partnerships with mineral-rich nations throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The German Federal Agency for Geological Studies and Natural Resources has already screened and investigated mineral-rich nations around the world and published a list of the top 10 nations in Africa, the top 10 nations in Latin America, the top 10 nations in Southeast Asia and the top 10 nations in the former Soviet Union with which Germany could consider raw materials partnerships.

As far as Africa and Latin America are concerned, it appears that the foreign-policy makers in Berlin are losing no time in making inroads.

Just four days after the Federation of German Industries decided to cultivate new raw materials partnerships, German Aid Minister Dirk Niebel embarked on a one-week trip to South America. “During Germany’s unification and the European Union’s extension to the east, we have not paid enough attention to some other parts of the world,” Niebel said as he was leaving. “That particularly applies to Africa and to some lesser extent to Latin America.”

Niebel contrasted Germany’s proposed approach with China’s current approach by saying that it was not enough to simply offer to build infrastructure in exchange for extracting cheap minerals. Rather, he stated that Germany plans to create income for the people of poor, resource-rich nations by helping them extract and process their native mineral reserve for export to Europe.

Many of the ideas presented to the Federation of German Industries will also be presented to the European Union. In early December, European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship Antonio Tajani will introduce a paper titled “Raw Materials Initiative” to the European Parliament. This paper states that the EU wants to access most of its raw materials from outside its own borders by means of new trade agreements.

Specifically, this paper says the EU plans to encourage a “win-win situation” by helping African nations achieve sustainable growth in return for raw materials. In the past, Europe has been reluctant in dealing with Africa because of the high tariffs that many African nations put on their mineral exports. Now, in the face of serious rare earth mineral shortages, European Commissioner for Trade Karel De Gucht has said that the EU is going to take a tougher stance against such trade barriers.

A Gargantuan New Trade Bloc

Once the German-led European Union succeeds in acquiring the mineral wealth of Africa and Latin America, it will have created a gargantuan global trade bloc capable of standing independent of both the United States and China.

Such a global trade bloc has been the dream of certain German geopoliticians for decades.

On May 20, 1950, the German newspaper Rheinischer Merkur recorded the following statement by then Chancellor Konrad Adenauer:

Germany has again become a factor with whom others will have to reckon in international affairs …. There is also a long-range economic goal: the colonization of Africa. … If we Europeans colonize Africa, we create at the same time a supplier of raw materials for Europe which will be of the greatest importance.

These German plans to colonize Africa and Latin America go back much further than Adenauer. Indeed, they go back all the way to Holy Roman Emperor Charles v, who ruled over all the territories of Spain in the New World.

The Nazis also had designs to capture the mineral wealth of Africa and Latin America. Even after Germany lost the Second World War, German geopolitical planners worked from Spain and Argentina on plans aimed at the colonization of these two continents, as well as the re-conquest of Europe.

In the early 1950s, British intelligence intercepted a document en route from a Nazi geopolitical center in Madrid outlining these plans. This captured circular letter—translated and reprinted in T.H. Tetens’ book Germany Plots With the Kremlin—states the following:

In the extended transitory period, it should prove possible for Germany to build up a new political bloc out of Europe, Africa and Latin America. The economic advantages and political possibilities in such a new power combination would put the United States against the wall. It would then depend entirely on our diplomatic and propaganda finesses when and how we would take over an America enfeebled by its foreign and domestic policies.

History has lost track of the exiled Nazis who penned these words. Even the most casual observer, however, can see that the ultimate goal of this plan is still in the process of being carried out. Germany has quietly penetrated Europe and united it under its guiding hand. Now this German-led European Union is working feverishly to “build up a new political bloc out of Europe, Africa and Latin America.”

In the words of the German geopoliticians who penned the Madrid Circular Letter, “such a new power combination would put the United States against the wall.”

If the U.S. lost the markets of Africa and Latin America to a united Europe, the effects would be devastating. The American economy would be strangled to death industrially as its eastern supply of chrome, cobalt, uranium and rare earth minerals was gobbled up by China and its southern supply of these same minerals was gobbled up by Europe. Such an eventuality would certainly be the final death knell of the already ailing American dollar. Once the dollar collapsed, the economic reverberations would shake this world’s financial systems to their cores. Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel would all experience economic meltdown. Asia and Europe would be left as the world’s only self-sustaining economic blocs at that point.

Economic Siege Prophesied

As shocking as this situation may sound, the Bible actually prophesies that a German-led united Europe will team up with China and its Asian allies to economically destroy and besiege the Anglo-Saxon world.

In the 17th and 18th chapters of the biblical book of Revelation, God labels the German-led, Vatican-influenced empire that is emerging in Europe as “Babylon the great.” In the corresponding Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27, the same empire appears under the name of the most powerful trading center of the ancient Mediterranean world—Tyre.

In Ezekiel 27:4-6, 12-13, there is a prophecy directed at the king of Tyre that says, “Thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty. They have made all thy ship boards of fir trees of Senir: they have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee. Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars; the company [of] the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory, brought out of the isles of Chittim. … Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and the vessels of brass in thy market.”

The ancient peoples of Chittim have today settled in China, and the ancient people of Tarshish are now located in modern-day Japan. The peoples of Tubal and Meshech intermingled with other ancient peoples to become the modern Russians. (For proof of this, refer to Dr. Herman Hoeh’s article “The Truth About the Race Question” in the July 1957 issue of the Plain Truth magazine and our reprint article “Who Is Chittim?”)

This prophecy then tells of a global economic consortium formed when a German-dominated EU temporarily teams up with China, Japan and Russia to control the Earth’s resources. Such a global economic consortium would have more than enough power to besiege and enslave the Anglo-Saxon nations of the world.

To learn more about the prophecies concerning an economic siege upon the Anglo-Saxon world, request a free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.