The world is fixated on Europe. On Greece’s new government, on the details surrounding Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation, on the yields on Italian government bonds, on the Continent’s contracting economies, on the rise and fall of the euro.

But there’s an odd dimension to all the attention Europe is getting.

While many are looking, very, very few actually understand what they are witnessing.

Take the recent melee in the Greek government. The crisis began October 31, when Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou jeopardized the recently created Greek bailout package and infuriated eurozone leaders by announcing he would allow the Greek populace to vote on the austerity conditions ensconced within the bailout package. Although Papandreou reneged two days later, he couldn’t stop the tumultuous chain of events that resulted in his resignation Sunday.

With Greece’s government in turmoil and the future of Europe at stake, eurozone officials swooped in. First, rather than leave the decision of who should lead Greece to Greek voters in a national election, European elites—using bailout money as leverage—commanded Athens to form a national unity government.

Once it had formed a national unity government, Athens was told it would have to provide written guarantees to Brussels that it would approve the austerity package that was part of the deal to receive bailout money. Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, told Athens it would not receive an $11 billion bailout installment until the assurances were made.

Grasp what is happening here. Greece is a sovereign nation of 11 million people, and—or so we’ve been led to believe—a valued member of the European community. But over the last week, European elites have blackmailed Athens into foregoing a democratic election, establishing a unity government and then agreeing to pass into Greek law a series of harsh, transformative rules that were created in Brussels.

And this wasn’t even the most dramatic development in Greece this week.

That came yesterday, when news leaked that Greece’s leaders had followed orders and selected—as opposed to the Greek populace electing—parliamentary speaker Filippos Petsalnikos to be the new prime minister. Mr. Petsalnikos’s pedigree is intriguing.

Petsalnikos spent most of the ’60s and ’70s residing in Germany, where he was a leading member of the Panhellenic Liberation Movement, a Greek political party created to oppose Greece’s 1967-1974 military dictatorship. In 1974, Petsalnikos helped found pasok, the Panhellic Socialist Movement (now one of the main political parties in Greece), and was one of its most active leaders in Germany during the ’70s. Mr. Petsalnikos speaks fluent German, is married to a German lawyer, and for years was a leading figure in the Greek community in Germany. In April 2009, the German government awarded him the German Grand Cross with Star for his work in Greek-German relations.

No sooner had this news emerged, however, than the deal on forming a Greek national unity government collapsed and the position of prime minister was up for grabs again. The latest news indicates that former European Central Bank Vice President Lucas Papademos is the top candidate after feuding in the political parties blocked Petsalnikos’s candidacy. Throughout his career, Papademos has held high-level financial jobs in Europe and is said to be well respected in European political circles, particularly in Germany and France. By all indications, he too is a leader who would be loyal to Brussels.

In other words, it appears Germany is on the brink of installing one of its own men on the Greek throne!

Not content with this victory, Berlin and Brussels are already maneuvering to do the same in Italy. When the news broke yesterday that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will resign, it was reported that he was simply another casualty of Europe’s debt crisis. But the truth is more sinister. Mr. Berlusconi has aroused the ire of European elites in recent months due to his slow-footed approach to addressing Italy’s financial issues. This week, as the crisis peaked, officials in Brussels and Berlin ramped up pressure on Berlusconi to get economic reforms and the 2012 budget passed in Italy’s parliament. In order to get the votes needed to pass the legislation, Berlusconi had to promise to resign.

It’s not clear right now who Italy’s next prime minister will be. The spotlight is on Mario Monti, an experienced economist and politician and a former European commissioner. Not surprisingly, Mr. Monti is a tried and tested Europhile with a record of putting Brussels before Rome. As a European commissioner, Monti authored a report on the establishment of a European single market that included measures by which Brussels could extend its reach into the financial matters of EU member states.

Watch Italy closely, and be assured: Whoever Italy’s next prime minister is, he will undoubtedly be a pawn in the hands of German elites!

It’s hard to overstate the significance of these events. We are “witnessing … the economic colonization of Europe by stealth by the Germans,” wrote Simon Heffer this week (emphasis added throughout). In the past, it would have “taken an invading military force to topple the leadership of a European nation. Today, it can be done through sheer economic pressure,” he wrote.

That’s an alarming statement when you really think on it.

Yesterday, Reuters, citing EU officials, reported that German and French officials have already “discussed plans for a radical overhaul of the European Union that would involve establishing a more integrated and potentially smaller eurozone.” Apparently this cabal of elites in Paris, Berlin and Brussels have discussed the possibility of some EU nations leaving the euro while the others forge ahead into deeper economic and political integration.

Germany is reshaping Europe into a distinctly Teutonic edifice. “It is time for a breakthrough to a new Europe,” stated German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday. Just to make sure there was no ambiguity about what this “new Europe” would look like, Merkel stated that this will “mean more Europe, not less Europe.”

In an editorial this week, the Daily Mail warned that “increasingly, it appears we are witnessing the death of democracy and the right of sovereign nations inside the eurozone to govern their own affairs.” Finally, after years and decades, the ruthless ambitions of the elites guiding the EU are being exposed. We’re seeing that the EU has no interest in protecting the sovereign European states, in defending the rights of the European people. Rather, as the Trumpet has repeatedly warned, the EU is an undemocratic, German-led powerhouse engaged in a strategy to conquer, then subjugate, the sovereign states of Europe.

In fact, it’s all that and much,muchmore!

In an article last Friday, Archbishop Cranmer, the man behind one of the top political blogs in Britain, got close to the truth of the matter. The German-led “European Union is essentially the re-creation of the old empire of Charlemagne,” he wrote. The EU today, he explained, has picked up the mantle of Charlemagne, just like Otto the Great did in the 10th century, then the Habsburg kings in the Middle Ages and then Napoleon in the early 19th century.

If you know your European history, you know that’s a chilling comparison!

“The spirit of Charlemagne still broods,” he wrote. There is more to come, he warned, as the “same fate will befall Portugal, Italy and Spain, for the powerfully federalist character of this project has yet to be appreciated.”

What about you? Can you appreciate what we are witnessing? While the world is fixated on the currency exchanges, on the bond yields and bailout packages, on the effect of Europe’s financial crisis on global stock markets and hedge funds, what are you seeing in Europe? Do you see a continent being systematically conquered by an invigorated, empowered German nation?

The spirit of Charlemagne is brooding in Europe.

Whether you see it later or now is a matter of life and death—it’s that serious!