The Old Rome-Berlin Axis Is Back
Chancellor Merkel's replacement of her old political partner Nicolas Sarkozy with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti hastens the resurrection of Charlemagne's Holy Roman Empire.
From the July 2012 Trumpet Print Edition
European elites have been working for 60 years to bring about two events that are key to European unification. Both events are now in motion.
The first comes from the "Berlin Group," an assembly formed out of a German idea to gather the foreign ministers of the European Union's leading economies—excluding Britain. In April, it recommended that a powerful new presidency be created within the EU—a super-president—a veritable "Charlemagne"!
Under the headline "Ministers Ponder Creation of EU Super-President," EUobserver.com reported, "A senior EU source told this website following a meeting of the club in the Val Duchesse stately home in Brussels on [April 19] that the new supremo would have more power than either Herman Van Rompuy or José Manuel Barroso" (April 20). Van Rompuy is current president of the European Council; Barroso is president of the European Commission. The two presidencies tend to clash over EU policy. A "super-president" given charge over all EU institutions would have the power to dictate policy direction.
Shortly after the "Berlin Group" came out with that startling recommendation, the second major event took place. German Chancellor Angela Merkel realized that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in trouble. Sarkozy was Merkel's partner in pushing for European unification, and was the candidate she endorsed in France's national elections. But Sarkozy, it was clear, was about to lose. So what did she do? She turned to Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti to forge a new alliance to lead the EU.
These latest moves are real game changers, the effects of which will soon be felt worldwide. The balance of power is changing in Europe, and the fallout is prophesied to have global effects of massive proportions!
The Crisis and the Solution
The catalyst for both this super-presidency and this new alliance is Europe's worsening economic crisis, which is also destabilizing Europe's political order. To date, 11 leaders of EU member nations have fallen in the wake of this crisis.
Anticipating the increasing clamor for EU leaders to promote growth in the face of austerity, Mario Monti and Angela Merkel are colluding with European Central Bank (ecb) President Mario Draghi to establish the future of EU economic policy. Merkel's and Monti's staffs have planned several joint German-Italian economic stimulus initiatives that will be brought to the European Council in June. In the process, Socialist Francois Hollande's France is being marginalized.
Chancellor Merkel did more than just verbally affirm her solidarity with Rome. She also did a U-turn on her economic policy, readily agreeing to Rome's line. Draghi has criticized Merkel's fiscal discipline policy, saying that the crisis can't be solved through budget cuts and tax increases alone. Draghi says the circumstances call for "structural measures to favor economic growth." Merkel accepted the critique and formally acknowledged, "We need growth, to be sustained through structural reforms." That was a very real, very public policy reversal from Merkel's previously declared stance.
As the Trumpet has said before, watch Monti and Draghi—and watch closely for Merkel to be increasingly influenced by Rome in her political and economic outlook.
Prime Minister Monti and ecb head Draghi have the same Jesuit mind in their approach to the crisis. Merkel joining forces with them places the EU's purse strings—and the German levers of power—much closer to Rome's grasp.
Expect Berlin and Rome to dominate EU policy decisions from here on.
The End of Franco-German Leadership
Since the European Community's inception, joint Franco-German leadership has been a given. France wanted to keep a close eye on Germany to ensure that nation would never repeat its incursions across France's borders such as had occurred in 1871, 1914 and 1939. The postwar French view was that Germany would become the economic engine of Europe, while having limited political influence. France would take the lead European political role. It seemed an ideal arrangement to the Western allies.
Things continued in that preordained manner until two major disruptions began to fracture the arrangement.
The first was the implosion of the Soviet Union, which had two effects: the reunification of Germany in 1990, and the resurgence of Roman Catholicism in post-communism Eastern Europe.
The second disruption occurred when economic crisis struck Europe in 2008. All of a sudden, Germany, by far the most powerful economy in Europe, found a political voice to match its economic weight.
Using the economic crisis as the catalyst, Berlin began to call the tune for the economic response. The resulting decrees from Germany's political power base in Berlin and its financial base at the ecb in Frankfurt have left EU nations subject to Germany.
A third catalyst now works to change the whole balance of power in Europe: Nicolas Sarkozy's failure to gain reelection as president of France. This will prove to be a watershed event not only in Franco-German relations, but also in Berlin's political relationship with the EU.
Gone is the lynchpin partnership that had held the EU together since the Treaty of Rome established the European Community in 1957. Before Sarkozy had officially been ousted from the French presidency in the May elections, Chancellor Merkel had already quickly moved to align Germany with Rome. Even before France's new leader took office, Italian Prime Minister Monti had already replaced Berlin's traditional EU political partner.
In place of the Franco-German alliance is a new partnership: a resurrection of the old Rome-Berlin Axis of 1939!
To think of that old Axis being resurrected—given the destruction it wreaked just 70 years ago—is a fearful thing indeed! Yet this is the reality.
And it was all prophesied to be so, in your Bible, millennia ago!
Rome-Berlin Axis Prophesied
Back in 1954, Herbert Armstrong declared, "Nothing can prevent Germany from completely dominating Europe. Soon there will be the prophesied United Europe—the resurrected Roman Empire—with Germans in complete domination. It's prophesied! It is hurling on toward the destruction of America and Britain" (Sept. 18, 1954).
Three years later, he wrote: "No one else is telling what prophecy says Germany and fascism in Europe are starting under cover. You'll soon see it—theUnited States of Europe—the resurrected Roman Empire!" (Nov. 20, 1957).
No one else was! Herbert Armstrong was the lone voice crying out in a wilderness of confusion and declaring to the world the sure prophecies of God, declaring decades ago that a final resurrection of the old Holy Roman Empire would arise to powerfully disrupt the world again!
In 1978, Mr. Armstrong specifically declared, "Undoubtedly Germany will head the new resurrected 'Holy Roman Empire'" (Aug. 14, 1978).
Months later, he published an article in the January 1979 Plain Truth magazine declaring emphatically: "I have been proclaiming and writing, ever since 1935, that the final one of the seven eras of the Holy Roman Empire is coming in our generation—a 'United States of Europe,' combining 10 nations or groups of nations in Europe—with a union of church and state!
"The nations of Europe have been striving to become reunited. They desire a common currency, a single combined military force, a single united government. They have made a start in the Common Market. They are now working toward a common currency. Yet, on a purely political basis, they have been totally unable to unite.
"In only one way can this resurrected Holy Roman Empire be brought to fruition—by the 'good offices' of the Vatican, uniting church and state once again, with the Vatican astride and ruling (Revelation 17:1-5)."
That prophesied union of church and state could not effectively emerge till the Franco-German bloc was broken and a new balance of power established in Europe: a Rome-Berlin axis! Just such an axis has emerged with Chancellor Merkel's surrendering, at Rome's behest, on her policy for handling Europe's economic crisis.
Blind to the Reality
Few see the historic omens in a revival of the old Rome-Berlin Axis. That was recently made apparent by Britain's defense secretary, Philip Hammond, who encouraged Germany to "put aside the legacy of World War ii and be more willing to 'deliver firepower' for nato and the West" (Telegraph, May 9).
Hammond pushed for Germany to forget the past and assert itself again as a military power. He encouraged Germany to demonstrate "a willingness to pick up the burdens that go with having a globally important economy … recognizing that it can't continue to be the dominant economy in Europe without also significantly increasing its military capability" (emphasis added throughout).
Such a view demonstrates both a woeful blindness to history and a profound ignorance as to the nature of the Germanic peoples. It certainly shows the paucity of true, visionary leadership in Britain today (Isaiah 3:1-4).
Those with a better grasp of the facts should surely fear any tendency for a revival of that old Rome-Berlin Axis. Let those facts speak for themselves:
"On Nov. 1, 1936, Germany and Italy, reflecting their common interest in destabilizing the European order, announced a Rome-Berlin Axis one week after signing a treaty of friendship. … On May 22, 1939, Germany and Italy signed the so-called Pact of Steel, formalizing the Axis alliance with military provisions. … [T]he German invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, unleashed the European war" (Holocaust Encyclopedia).
That summarizes the more recent history of the Rome-Berlin axis. The effects of that Rome-Berlin Axis are summed up in the devastating statistics of the carnage it unleashed in World War ii. Of the estimated 60 million slaughtered in that greatest war in history, 29 million are estimated to have been killed in Europe alone. The massive number of injured plus the untold damage to property and the countryside of the Continent must all be included to give a true picture of the cataclysmic result of the most recent Rome-Berlin Axis of just seven decades past.
Yet, even more ancient histories should warn us of what is bound to occur when Rome and Berlin connect with the common goal of destabilizing the European order!
Awful History of Rome-Berlin Alliances
The first-century historian Tacitus put it this way: "The Germans have no taste for peace; renown is easier won among perils. … [T]hey are so strangely inconsistent. … The liberty of the Germans is a deadlier foe than the tyranny of the kings of Parthia" (Germania).
As the German author Adolph Schalk observed, "Thus as long ago as a.d. 98, the Roman historian Tacitus … already regarded the German people as a force to be reckoned with in Europe" (The Germans).
What was the role that Tacitus assigned to Rome in its relationship to the Germans? "Tacitus regarded [the Germans] as overgrown children who needed the strong arm of Roman discipline to keep them in line." Thus arose, with the crowning of Charlemagne in a.d. 800, the Holy Roman Empire.
Rome acted as both spiritual guide and unifying force of those "strangely inconsistent" people for what later became, under Emperor Maxmilian i, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The official German record says this about that title: "The term used for the empire, which emerged from the East-Franconian Empire of 962 with the coronation of Otto i as emperor, as of 1512 was officially called the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation—expressing, on the one hand, a claim to power as the successor to the 'Imperium Romanum' of antiquity, and on the other, highlighting the religious role of the emperor. The 'Reich' survived for more than 800 years until … 1806 …" (Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London).
In its wake, it left a trail of blood.
Watch and Pray!
Now, the old Rome-Berlin Axis is resurrected. A Bavarian pope at the helm in the Vatican is engaged in a great crusade of "new evangelization." Rome's men lead both the European Central Bank and the Vatican's home base nation, Italy. All that remains to complete the prophetic picture in Europe is for the new "Charlemagne" to arise and pull together the final prophesied 10-nation combine under a "super-president" office such as proposed by the Berlin Group.
These are all key pieces in a formula that will catalyze the ultimate fulfillment of some of the most powerful Bible prophecies for our time! These prophecies foretell of great devastation to be brought upon the Anglo-Saxon nations in the wake of this seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire!
These most recent dynamic events in Europe indicate that, even as Jesus Christ declared of these times we are living through, more than ever it is time to "Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man" (Luke 21:36).