DW: Germany’s Scholz seeks strengthening EU competitiveness; COGwriter: Prelude to a ‘fourth reich’?
Deutsche Welle reported the following:
Germany’s Scholz seeks strengthening EU competitiveness
16 March 2023
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday delivered a government address to the German parliament, the Bundestag, ahead of next week’s EU summit.
“Now is not about nostalgically mourning a ‘good old time’ when so much was — supposedly — better,” Scholz said. “Now it’s a matter of us setting out together and getting down to work so that a ‘good new time’ becomes possible — here with us in Germany and in Europe as a whole.”
Leaders of the bloc’s 27 member states are due to meet on March 23-24 to discuss further support for Ukraine amid the Russian war, as well as Europe’s economic and energy issues.
Scholz said he would seek to strengthen single markets and competitiveness in the EU through a series of reforms to be discussed next week in Brussels. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-scholz-seeks-strengthening-eu-competitiveness/a-65004033
Germany has been leading Europe economically. It also wants to do so politically and militarily.
Might Chancellor Scholz’s words be a prelude to a ‘fourth reich’?
Could economic factors lead to a militaristic ‘fourth reich’?
Notice also:
War forces Germany to chart a new future – and that’s not been easy
Germany, the European Union’s political and economic center, is undergoing a deep transformation in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. It’s a “Zeitenwende” – a sea change moment in the face of a bleak future.
March 10, 2023 …
The changes taking place in Germany cannot be overstated: Perhaps more than any other European Union country, the war in Ukraine is affecting Europe’s economic powerhouse the most.
Only three days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went before the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and delivered what is known as the “Zeitenwende speech,” named for a German word to describe a historic turning point.
“We are living through a watershed era,” Scholz said. “And that means that the world afterwards will no longer be the same as the world before.” …
Standing in the starkly modern plenary chamber of the Reichstag, Scholz announced it was time for Germany to confront a more dangerous future and rebuild its military in order to “protect our freedom and our democracy.”
For a nation rebuilt from the ashes of its Nazi past, talk of mass rearmament had been unthinkable, a kind of taboo, for large segments of German society and the political class only three days before.
In the speech, Scholz pledged to spend 100 billion euros (about $106 billion) to restore Germany’s long-neglected military, the Bundeswehr; and he vowed to nearly double Germany’s annual military budget to meet a NATO target of spending 2% of Germany’s $4 trillion gross domestic product on defense. …
- In 2015, … Poland even accusing Germany of seeking to turn the EU into a “Fourth Reich.” …
So, how will Germany adapt in this new era? That remains to be seen. https://www.courthousenews.com/war-forces-germany-to-chart-a-new-future-and-thats-not-been-easy/
Well, biblically, we know how this will turn out.
Notice something about Germany’s history published decades ago by the old Worldwide Church of God:
In 1933 Adolf Hitler, using Germany’s growing economic crisis as a stepping-stone to power, gained control of Germany, inaugurating the Third Reich of German history.
It quickly became clear that Hitler’s geopolitical aims far transcended his own country’s borders. Hitler held an unshakable conviction that his German Reich would one day rule all of Europe — and from there seize the leadership of the world! He dreamed of a “new world order” that would remake the political face of the earth, with himself at its helm.
In 1939 Hitler began in earnest his struggle for the mastery of the world. (Stump K. Coming Soon – A New World Order. Good News, 1985)
Could there be some type of a ‘fourth reich’ this century to follow the ‘third reich’ of last century?
The old Radio Church of God thought so, even decades earlier:
The “German Problem” is not dead. Germans are thinking more than ever of an undivided Reich – and of an undivided Europe! … On the 17th of June, Germans celebrated a national holiday a day dedicated to AN UNDIVIDED GERMANY. Stores closed. No one worked. The striking thing is that this day signifies something that has not happened yet! Most holidays commemorate an event – something that has already taken place. Not this one – it looks forward to an event which all Germans hope for and even pray for – AN UNDIVIDED GERMANY! (Kelly R. The March for an Undivided Germany. Plain Truth, September 1964)
Well, since that came out, East and West Germany united, the European Union formed, and a European currency has been implemented.
So, is a ‘fourth reich’ in the process of forming? Some in Germany and elsewhere seem to think so.
A while back, a reader sent a link to the following from the German publication Der Spiegel:
‘The Fourth Reich’: What Some Europeans See When They Look at Germany
23 March 2015
People have even begun talking about the “Fourth Reich,” a reference to the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler. That may sound absurd given that today’s Germany is a successful democracy without a trace of national-socialism — and that no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism. But further reflection on the word “Reich,” or empire, may not be entirely out of place. The term refers to a dominion, with a central power exerting control over many different peoples. According to this definition, would it be wrong to speak of a German Reich in the economic realm? …
A heavy accusation has been levelled at Germany — by some in Greece, in Spain and in France but also by some in Great Britain and in the United States. The euro crisis, a certain breed of politicians, journalists and economists argue, has allowed Germany to dominate Southern Europe and to suffocate it in order to impose its principles even as its export policy has meant that the country has profited from that same currency crisis more than any other country. Germany’s image in some countries has become one of an egotistical economic occupier flanked by smaller Northern European countries from the same mold. …
‘The Blood of Our People’
The fear of German hegemony in Europe is likely nowhere so great as it is in France, which was at least partially occupied by its neighbor three times during an 80-year period. In recent years, “Germanophobia” has increased dramatically across the political spectrum, from Front National to the leftist wing of the governing Socialists. That has partially served to distract attention from political leaders’ own failures to implement reform, but they are nonetheless sentiments that deserve to be taken seriously.
The leftist French intellectual Emmanuel Todd warns that Germany is “increasingly pursuing politics of power and of hidden expansion.” Europe, he says, is being ruled by a Germany which, in its past, has constantly fluctuated between reason and megalomania. Since reunification, Todd says, Germany has brought a huge area of Eastern Europe under its control, a region once under the influence of the Soviets, to use it for its own economic aims.
In Athens, in a building belonging to the Ministry of Culture, Nikos Xydakis, deputy culture minister for the Syriza government, echoes the sentiment.
“It is as though my country were experiencing the consequences of war,” he says. European savings policies have ruined Greece, he says: “We have lost a quarter of our gross domestic product and a quarter of our population is unemployed.” Furthermore, he said, Greece didn’t ask for emergency loans, they were forced upon the country together with the cost-cutting program. “Now we are paying with the blood of our people.”
Germany, he says, has become too powerful in Europe. The country, he concedes, is a leader both politically and economically. “But those wanting to be a leader have to behave like one too.” Germany, he says, should be more generous and stop viewing weaker countries in Europe as its inferiors. …
Since the turn of the millennium, Germany’s trade surplus has almost quadrupled and now stands at €217 billion ($236.4 billion). With France alone, the surplus was €30 billion in 2014. Even if exports to euro-zone member states dropped as a result of the crisis, no other country in the world has a trade surplus as large as Germany’s. Why is that? Is it because of aggressive trade policy? …
Germany seeks to be an economic power, but not a military one. Its nationalism is based on economic output and export statistics, not on a desire to become a geo-political power. The same dilemma can be seen in the role Germany has played in the Ukraine crisis. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-power-in-the-age-of-the-euro-crisis-a-1024714.html
Many in Europe are concerned that Germany is simply too big of an economic power. However, without the economic might of Germany, the European Union would have even more difficulties sticking together.
But the idea that Germany does not want to be a military power is simply not the case. Furthermore, Germany has publicly committed to spend more money on its military than any nation in Europe–including Russia (watch Is the European Beast Growing Horns?).
This does not mean that everyone in Germany wants it to militarily dominate the world, but Bible prophecy shows that deep down, those there do want to dominate.
Notice the following prophecy:
5 “Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger
And the staff in whose hand is My indignation.
6 I will send him against an ungodly nation,
And against the people of My wrath
I will give him charge,
To seize the spoil, to take the prey,
And to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
7 Yet he does not mean so,
Nor does his heart think so;
But it is in his heart to destroy,
And cut off not a few nations.
8 For he says,
‘Are not my princes altogether kings? (Isaiah 10:6-8)
Notice that the leader of the final empire will not think that he wants to destroy nations, but he really does, and really will.
Notice that Isaiah tells of a time when the end time Assyrian power will be sent against an ungodly (NKJV), “hypocritical” (KJV) nation. The Hebrew word used signifies being “soiled” or impious, and certainly that is now the case for the nation known as the United States. The Snowden leaks of USA espionage have enraged the Germans.
Not only do they feel that the USA has been hypocritical here, they were outraged to learn that according to leaked documents from the National Security Agency (NSA), Germany was one of the most spied upon nations by the USA. Another NSA document said that the only nations that the USA considered to be “close friends” that did not warrant extensive USA espionage was the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic dominated lands. Germany and others have noticed this and will take steps against them later (cf. Daniel 11:39; Psalm 83:-3-8). And then there is German distaste of US President Donald Trump.
Here is some other information related to a possible fourth reich:
3 May 2019
In “The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present,” historian Gavriel D. Rosenfeld brings his counterfactual “what if” approach to the idea of a new empire based on Nazi ideals. … “The case of postwar Germany makes it clear that western fears about a Nazi return to power were far from unfounded and that the concerns about a Fourth Reich served a useful function in making people vigilant about defending against such a possibility,” said Rosenfeld in an exchange with The Times of Israel. …
In Rosenfeld’s assessment, today the idea of a Fourth Reich has entered an unprecedented heyday.
“The Fourth Reich is currently experiencing a new phase of normalization,” wrote Rosenfeld, whose latest book was published in March. “Thanks to the tumultuous political upheaval throughout the western world, the concept is becoming increasingly universalized. The election of Donald Trump, the many unending conflicts in the Middle East, and the continuing crisis of the European Union have made the prospect of a future Reich highly relevant.”
In Europe, according to Rosenfeld, the prospect of a Fourth Reich is raised by European Union critics on both the Left and Right: Some claim Germany has turned the EU into a kind of economic Reich. https://www.timesofisrael.com/siren-call-of-a-fourth-reich-is-spreading-warns-nazi-germany-expert/
30 March 2019
Fourth Reich …
Some of us — and I plead guilty to this — have used the term simply to describe the present German state in its reunified, Europe-dominating form. While of course such usage is a bit of a tease, it also seems to be a matter of fact. As Professor Rosenfeld reminds us, ‘Reich’ in German means ‘realm’ or, as we would probably say today, ‘polity’. And so since the two fractured pieces of Germandom were put back together in 1990, what we have the other side of Holland is the Fourth Reich. To have a Reich you don’t have to have genocide, concentration camps or monocled, Iron Cross-wearing Obersts uttering ‘for you, Tommy, ze var iss over’. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/where-is-the-rise-of-neo-nazism-around-europe-leading/
What exactly is the ‘fourth reich’? Notice one interpretation:
The Fourth Reich (German: Viertes Reich) is a theoretical future German empire, following the First Reich (the Holy Roman Empire, 962–1806), the Second Reich (Imperial Germany, 1871–1918) and the Third Reich (Nazi Germany, 1933–1945). (Wikipedia, accessed 04/03/15)
Some believe that Germany already has had a type of fourth reich as it has been able to dominate European matters at least for the past decade or so.
Biblically, the final European King of the North will lead a revived ‘Holy Roman Empire.’ This will be the empire of the Beast power of Revelation 13. This new world order, which will have German dominance, will in a sense be its fourth militaristic reich (reich means reign).
A reader sent me a link to the following:
14 August 2019
THE GERMAN Navy has agreed a deal with a missile company to develop a huge laser weapon, promising “new possibilities on land, at sea and in the air”.
Rheinmetall, a European defence contractor, and missile developers MBDA Deutschland have reached an agreement with the German Navy to supply the weapon. The laser will be mounted on a corvette ship – most likely a K130, UK Defence Journal reports. A press release said: “The details and division of responsibilities between the two companies will be determined as soon as the performance specification is made available by the Federal Office for Bundeswehr Equipment, Information Technology and In-service Support, Germany’s military procurement agency.” …
Justin Bronk, an expert in combat airpower and technology, said it would not be long before the technology, once the stuff of science fiction, was ready to be deployed.
Mr. Bonk said … “However, the major progress in recent years has been in the power output and beam quality of solid state laser weapons which simply draw their energy from electricity rather than chemical reactions.
“The destructive potential of a laser is directly proportional to the amount of energy that can be put through it so handheld weapons are very unlikely for the forseeable future without some sort of revolution in energy storage and generation technology. https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1165576/german-navy-news-military-news-laser-weapon-military
The Bundeswehr are the unified armed forces of Germany.
Expect more industrial support for German dominance.
Technology will, in my view, be key in the establishment of a militaristic fourth reich, consistent with scriptures such as Revelation 13:4.
Expect to see more support for a European military with German involvement.
The Bible tells of a time when a European power will defeat many (Daniel 11:39-43) and also dominate the world economically (Revelation 18). Germany will be a major factor in this although there will be problems in Europe (Daniel 2:41-43), after some reorganizations it will arise (Revelation 17:12-13).
A ‘fourth reich’ is in the process of being made, but it is not here yet. But something that can be called that will arrive.
Some items of possibly related interest may include:
Europa, the Beast, and Revelation Where did Europe get its name? What might Europe have to do with the Book of Revelation? What about “the Beast”? Is an emerging European power “the daughter of Babylon”? What is ahead for Europe? Here is a link to a video titled: Can You Prove that the Beast to Come is European?
European Technology and the Beast of Revelation Will the coming European Beast power would use and develop technology that will result in the taking over of the USA and its Anglo-Saxon allies? Is this possible? What does the Bible teach? Here is a related YouTube video: Military Technology and the Beast of Revelation.
Must the Ten Kings of Revelation 17:12 Rule over Ten Currently Existing Nations? Some claim that these passages refer to a gathering of 10 currently existing nations together, while one group teaches that this is referring to 11 nations getting together. Is that what Revelation 17:12-13 refers to? The ramifications of misunderstanding this are enormous.
Lost Tribes and Prophecies: What will happen to Australia, the British Isles, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the United States of America? Where did those people come from? Can you totally rely on DNA? What about other peoples? Do you really know what will happen to Europe and the English-speaking peoples? What about Africa, Asia, South America, and the Islands? This free online book provides scriptural, scientific, historical references, and commentary to address those matters. Here are links to related sermons: Lost tribes, the Bible, and DNA; Lost tribes, prophecies, and identifications; 11 Tribes, 144,000, and Multitudes; Israel, Jeremiah, Tea Tephi, and British Royalty; Gentile European Beast; Royal Succession, Samaria, and Prophecies; Asia, Islands, Latin America, Africa, and Armageddon; When Will the End of the Age Come?; Rise of the Prophesied King of the North; Christian Persecution from the Beast; WWIII and the Coming New World Order; and Woes, WWIV, and the Good News of the Kingdom of God.
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