Politics generally keeps one guessing, German politics doubly so.

It is sometimes hard to ascertain just who are the friends and who are the political enemies from one month to another in Germany. This has a lot to do with certain peculiarities of the German mind.

We have often quoted German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s observations that the German mind has its hidden passageways that make it unpredictable in one sense yet ultimately predictable in others. We have occasionally pointed to Luigi Barzini’s summation of the German people that they can seem to have the demeanor of a lamb one day, and a lion the next.

As “mutable” and “proteus-like” as Barzini indicated the Germans could be, there is one unerring trait they possess: Give them a populist leader at a time of crisis and they will rise with a spirit of startling aggression to vanquish all in their path to impose their will on the world.

Germany is caught in such a crisis today. It’s a crisis that Chancellor Angela Merkel has termed Europe’s worst since World War ii. It is being exacerbated by what Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, baron of the Holy Roman Empire, observed at November’s Halifax International Security Forum that EU leaders were failing to effectively address. Guttenberg stated that Germany’s leaders were ineffective in reaching the hearts and minds of the people, especially in explaining to them how the European Union worked.

There is no doubt that Guttenberg’s observations are correct. The facts are highlighted daily in various polls and news releases. The euro crisis dominates the news, but few truly understand its import—least of all, it often seems, the very leaders responsible for fixing it. As one German student e-mailed our own correspondent in Cyprus recently, “The Germans don’t trust in their politicians anymore.”

This is a time of deepest crisis for postwar Europe. Anticipating the worst, a number of EU member nations—not the least Germany—have plans well advanced to create, or re-create, their own sovereign means of exchange should the euro fail.

Germany, with the greatest hoard of bullion of any EU nation, is best set for such an occurrence. Some of Europe’s most astute observers have in fact stated that a certain few German elites may have orchestrated the whole euro project to reach such a conclusion. Whichever way the ball bounces, on the whole euro project one thing is sure: Germany will come out the winner—be it by shoring up the euro, instituting the euromark, or reinstituting its beloved old deutsche mark with a huge pile of bullion to back it!

Yet, to take full advantage of this great crisis, with its global implications, Germany needs both a populist leader and a binding ideology to not only consolidate and progress its current leadership of Europe, but to propel it to its next natural outcome: imperial expansion and domination by military force.

Concerning the ideology, the Bavarian Pope Benedict has set the scene for a great revival of Roman Catholicism as the binding ideology for the eventual 10 nations that will comprise the main power bloc in Europe (Revelation 17:12-13). That’s the same ideology that bound the Holy Roman Empire together in its past six resurrections.

The pope’s crusade, termed the “new evangelization,” currently under way, teamed with his announced “Year of Faith” being launched in October, are the twin platforms on which his great crusade to revive Roman Catholicism is based.

Concerning the populist leadership, the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (csu)—Germany’s most Catholic political party—is now not only setting the scene for the return of Baron Guttenberg to active politics, but also mulling the return of elder statesman Edmund Stoiber.

Over the past week, csu party president Horst Seehoffer; the party’s parliamentary leader, Gerda Hasselfeldt; csu parliamentary secretary Stefan Müller; plus Bavaria’s district administrator and csu district chairman of Upper Franconia, Christian Meissner; have all indicated support for Guttenberg’s return.

Not only this, Seehoffer gave a broad hint that the return to active politics of Bavaria’s elder statesman Edmund Stoiber was also discussed at the closed-door regional csu meeting last week. He stated that following Stoiber’s forced resignation, the csu had “gone downhill” ever since. He referred to Stoiber’s disempowerment as being wrong, with the result being that the csu had lost a very successful political personality (Suddeutsche, January 6).

Should the csu succeed in these endeavors to win back Guttenberg and/or Stoiber to active politics, and should one or both of these men gain high office at the 2013 elections, Germany would, for the first time since that grand old Bavarian statesman Franz Josef Strauss led the party, be in a prime position to bring to final fruition his “Grand Design” for Germany and Europe.

One does not have to be an overly astute analyst to add the current events together in Europe and deduce that a repetition of history is looming.

Consider the facts:

Europe is in deep and worsening crisis. Germany is by far the most dominant nation in Europe. German politics are in disarray, the nation’s chancellor and her party having lost much ground during the most recent state elections. The United States is about to effect a massive drawdown of its remaining presence in Europe and the crucial Middle East oil triangle, leaving a huge military vacuum behind it. Germany’s most conservative and most Roman Catholic political party is calling for the return to active politics of its two most populist personalities. A German pope is launching a great crusade of new evangelism to revive the only force that has ever united Europe in the past, its Roman Catholic religion.

Considering all the above factors, together with an election year looming in Germany in 2013, it would seem that the time is fast ripening for Germany to welcome a populist leadership to rally the people to a great crusading cause with the same enthusiasm that it did in the 1930s.

This time, however, Germany will not rally to the sign of the swastika. It will be to the sign of the cross of Rome. The clarity of biblical prophecy, which millennia ago forecast in detail all that is now happening before our eyes, is breathtaking.

Keep watching this website for the real news, even before it breaks, on just what will be the outcome of these earthshaking events in Europe.