The most stunning, significant event in the world today is how rapidly Germany is conquering the European Union. Get this: German politicians and commentators are warning Germans against “manifesting too triumphantly the openly erupting German domination over the EU that has become apparent,” German-Foreign-Policy.com recently reported (emphasis added throughout). Yes, we’re winning, big time—but don’t act too excited or you’ll make people nervous.

Well, the truth is, the rest of Europe has every right to be nervous. They are watching Germany achieve exactly what it wanted but failed at in two world wars!

What makes this infinitely more stunning and significant is that biblical prophecy said it would happen!

Because of those prophecies, the Trumpet has been beating the drum, warning that this would occur, for our entire 22-year history. Because of those prophecies, the Plain Truth did the same for over 50 years before that.

But those prophecies did more than predict current events. They also reveal their catastrophic outcome. That is why these warnings are so important and urgent.

We have just finished updating a booklet that Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry first wrote back in 1999. In light of recent events, this booklet, Germany’s Conquest of the Balkans, is riveting reading. It details a crucial period in modern history: when Germany began to bare its imperialist ambitions.

Here is the booklet’s first sentence: “Once again the Germans are structuring an empire.” What makes that statement particularly remarkable is that Mr. Flurry first wrote it in the August 1999 issue of the Trumpet.

It started 20 years ago, in 1991, when Germany strong-armed America and nato into helping to shatter Yugoslavia by recognizing the independence of Croatia and Slovenia. The booklet follows the history through the rest of that decade, when Germany used Croatia as a foothold into the Balkans, culminating in the Kosovo war of 1999 that dealt a fatal blow to Serbia, which was allied with the U.S. against Germany in World War ii. Thus, in a swoop, Germany bent the U.S. and Europe to its will, used nato forces to achieve its own national aims, neutralized a former enemy, gained an area in which to test and build its own military, and began to construct an eastern leg for a future German-dominated superstate!

Few people recognized the significance of these events as they were happening. But because we understood the prophetic overview, we have been reporting on them all along. Now, with Germany’s power over Europe all the more obvious, the true nature of this dramatic history is impossible to ignore.

“[B]raceyourselves,” the booklet says: “A strong militaristic Germany is marching once again, and its destruction this time will make its crimes in World Wars i and ii look like child’s play!”

The booklet shows how Germany, after systematically dismantling Yugoslavia, then cemented its control over this region step by step. After the Kosovo war, nato, and particularly the United States, wanted to get out and transfer responsibility for military operations to the Europeans. nato began its withdrawal in 2002. The EU began its own first-ever policing missions in Bosnia in 2003, and the area quickly became, as Stratfor called it at the time, “a proving ground for EU military ambitions.” It wrote on April 29, 2002, “With the United States committed to disengaging from the Balkans, Germany will emerge as the dominant power in there and, by extension, in European defense policy.” How true that turned out to be.

Today, Slovenia is a member of the European Union. It joined the eurozone in 2007 and even held the presidency of the EU Council for the first six months of 2008. Last week, Croatia signed a treaty that will make it the 28th member of the European Union in 18 months. All the other countries that emerged from former Yugoslavia, as well as neighboring Albania, are trying to become EU members. Macedonia and Montenegro have been officially accepted as EU candidates. Four others—including Serbia and its former province Kosovo—are potential candidates.

It all amounts to a stunning coup for Germany! As the title of the first chapter in this booklet describes it, Yugoslavia is nothing less than “The First Military Victim of World War iii”!

On May 31, 1935, Winston Churchill wrote, “Everywhere these countries are being made to look to Germany in a special way.” The same scenario is playing out today, and it started with events in the Balkans two decades ago. “This major turnaround in the Balkans has caused Europe to look to Germany once again,” Mr. Flurry wrote. “And today all of Europe is looking to Germany in a special way. The outcome will be frighteningly similar to World War ii—except it will be about a thousand times worse!”

“World war iii has already begun! Soon all of Europe will be under Germany’s control—and that is only the beginning.”

These and many other critical warnings based on events in the Balkans have been preserved in this powerful little booklet. It quotes an Intelligence Digest issue from 1995 that says Germany’s conquests in Yugoslavia “form only a small part of an overall U.S.-German plan for Europe. … Germany’s control of Western Europe is exercised through the European Union, and American support for German dominance of the EU has been evident since at least 1990. … So Germany, with the full backing of America,is to be the sole great power of Europe.” So it is.

The Prophet Jeremiah wrote about a “boiling caldron; and the face thereof is from the north” (Jeremiah 1:13; American Standard Version). This churning, scalding pot “from the north” is Europe, and it has reached the point where anyone can recognize it. The trouble is, far too many are too caught up in petty personal interests to notice.

What about you? “People could see, and even feel, the seething if they only understood a little history. But they refuse to be taught by history—even quite recent history!” Mr. Flurry wrote in this booklet. “There are only a few short years before the pot boils over. We should ratchet up our lives to the emergency level. We can no longer afford to squander time.”

The perspective on present events afforded by biblical prophecy is crucial. Consider this: For this booklet, we updated a few facts and tweaked the language to reflect more its historical nature. But the heart of it—the statements that reveal the gravity of what we are seeing unfold today—was written more than a decade ago. Anyone who has followed the Trumpet’s reportage of European events over the years has seen it coming for miles.

If you want to better understand the importance of biblical prophecy in predicting the news before it happens—and to better appreciate the urgency of the times—you have to read Germany’s Conquest of the Balkans. You can read the older version online right now by following this link. Or, click this link to call us or send an e-mail, and we’ll gladly send you a free copy of the revised version as soon as it comes off the presses.