Our longtime readers know that we have long anticipated a close liaison between Germany and the embattled Judaic nation of Israel, even the moreso as pan-Islamism gains increasing political influence in the Middle East.

But few realize just how soon after World War ii Israel began reaching out to Germany for both intelligence and the provision of military hardware. As early as 1960, Israeli intelligence leaders contacted Germany for help in stemming rising Arabian aggression against the survival of the fledgling State of Israel.

Paradoxically, the first meetings between the Israeli secret service and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (bnd), the postwar German intelligence service, took place in Munich, Bavaria, in the villa that was once the residence of Martin Bormann, Hitler’s chief of the chancellery. This was made all the more poignant by the Israelis’ knowing full well that Bormann had signed the edicts that gave Adolf Eichmann full power to slaughter millions of Jews in Nazi death camps.

Yet, in the minds of the security chiefs from the largely friendless, struggling nation of Israel, the expediency of national survival in the face of the seeming overwhelming anti-Israel pan-Arabism, driven by Egypt’s Gamul Abdul Nasser, led them to seek aid from their former genocidal enslavers.

As the Berliner Zeitung observed, that first clandestine meeting between Isser Harel, head of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, and the president, at the time, of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (bnd), the chief Nazi spy in Hitler’s Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East, Reinhard Gehlen, marked a turning point in relations between the Jews’ major persecutor of World War ii and the persecuted (Jan. 8, 2000).

This situation is made all the more remarkable in light of the fact that the bnd was infested with Nazis. Under the auspices of both the United States and Britain, Gehlen was encouraged to create Germany’s postwar spy network. This he did, with the full connivance of the Allies, by culling ex-Nazis, former SS officers and Nazi sympathizers, especially from the Soviet East, into the bnd structure.

Thus it was that when Harel entered that Bavarian villa to consort with some of the most extreme elements of Jew-hating Nazidom, he sowed the seeds for the fulfillment of the words of one of his nation’s own prophets, Hosea.

As our editor in chief has written of this very prophecy: “The book of Hosea was written as prophecy for the end time. Again, the nation called Israel today is really biblical Judah. There are some specific prophecies about Judah in this book. ‘When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound’ (Hosea 5:13).

“Studying this verse in the original Hebrew reveals that both Ephraim (Britain) and Judah (called ‘Israel’ today) go to Assyria (or Germany—to prove that fact, write for our free booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire).”

Dwelling on the Jews, in particular, Gerald Flurry asks the question: “Why do the Jews go to Germany, and what is Judah’s wound?”

He points to the words of another prophet, Obadiah: “Another word for wound is also mentioned in Obadiah 1:7: ‘All the men of thy confederacy have brought thee even to the border: the men that were at peace with thee have deceived thee, and prevailed against thee; they that eat thy bread have laid a wound under thee: there is none understanding in him.’ [This wound] Gesenius defines … as ‘falsehood; hence, fraud, insidious dealing … net, or snare.’ It has the same root word as the word used in Hosea 5:13. In Obadiah the wound is directly related to being deceived by a peace pact!”

That initial meeting between the heads of Israel’s and Germany’s secret services began a process of intelligence and military cooperation between Germany and Israel which has continued for more than five decades. It resulted in the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two former rank enemies which has extended on down to a time when, most recently, Israel and Germany have publicly recognized each other as the closest of allies.

During Chancellor Angela Merkel’s most recent visit to Israel, she declared that Germany’s relations with Israel have “no parallel with any other country to which Germany has ties” (Jerusalem Post, February 2).

So close have the two former enemy nations become that they each take turns in hosting an annual joint cabinet session of their governments in the other’s country.

“Merkel, considered one of Israel’s closest allies in Europe, declared that ‘the security of Israel is not just a two-state issue, but a global issue. We have to make certain that the security of Israel in secure borders is assured’” (ibid.).

Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, stated during the chancellor’s visit to Israel that “We are allies, Israel and Germany, and we have a great desire, on both sides, to strengthen our relationship and our bilateral cooperation. We also have the strong desire to advance peace and security in our region. Chancellor Merkel and I spoke at length about several ideas in this regard. We know that we are in a very stormy and unstable period, and we would like to advance stability, peace and security.” To which Chancellor Merkel replied, “We have similar values, which makes it very easy for us to cooperate” (jta, January 31).

Yet, we would do well to remember just where all this collaboration between Israel and Germany started. It started with Israel initiating contact with those who were unrepentant Nazis, of that very group that Herbert Armstrong stated “went underground” toward the close of World War ii, armed with their same imperialist dreams of world conquest. They emerged after the war—too often encouraged, aided and abetted by the U.S. and Britain—to build an infrastructure in Germany that would consummate in the fulfillment of their old Nazi dream of creating a world empire based on their national socialist model.

Of such were those who established the foundation of today’s German intelligence service. Of such came the postwar industrialists, bankers, businessmen and bureaucrats who formed the postwar Adenauer-era West German republic. That vision has been passed on to other generations of German elites by those who never did free themselves from the dream of global hegemony. Much of that very vision is now embedded in the Lisbon Treaty/European constitution upon which the imperialist European Union is established.

When one knows the history, and even more so the Bible prophecies relating to the current nexus between Germany and Israel, one understands that the prophecy of Hosea is not only well advanced in its fulfillment, but also, it had a very early start, way back there on a chilly winter evening in Bavaria at Martin Borman’s villa. The venue, and the host, could hardly have been more indicative of the outcome. Harel’s visit would commence Israel on a road to disaster.

Here is why this is so dangerous.

In many end-time prophecies, God discusses Israel’s Assyrian “lovers,” and how Israel will be the victim of a treacherous diplomatic double cross. Ezekiel 23 discusses this double cross calamity. “Wherefore I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted” (verses 9, 12).

Our booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy is an extremely timely book for this very moment when the touch tape of insurrection has been lit all across those countries surrounding the tiny embattled nation of Israel. This present Mideast unrest is but a catalyst guaranteed to revive the Middle East “peace process,” but with more overt German involvement this time.

Read our booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy for a running account of where the present Middle Eastern disruption is heading and what it portends for the future that lies beyond. In the meantime, watch for the Middle East peace process to be back on the international agenda very soon. But this time, with the European Union—Germany at its helm—being a chief instigator and the U.S. taking more of a backseat.