Watch Germany!
By
Ron FraserSeptember 7, 2009
September is jam-packed with events of significance to observers of Germany’s rise to global power.
A week ago, both candidates for the chancellorship, incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, received a shock. The largely state-controlled media had been singing a song of praise to Merkel, claiming that she was a shoo-in for regaining the chancellorship following the upcoming September 27 federal elections. But last weekend, both candidates lost support following state elections in Saxony, Thuringia and Saar. All polled increases in the vote for minority parties, with Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Steinmeier’s Social Democrats losing support in the process.
On Tuesday, Time commented (emphasis mine),
Now German politics is no longer dominated by the two big parties—the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats—with the kind of stable two-party coalitions that were typical of West Germany. The political game is much more open, with at least five parties vying for power and reflecting the much broader spectrum of political opinion in the population. This seemingly unstable coalition system is the new normal. … According to opinion polls, Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to be coasting to victory in September—but now the race seems more uncertain than ever. Her cdu party lost its absolute majority in Thuringia and Saar and may lose power altogether to three-party left-leaning coalitions in those states. In Saxony, the cdu and fdp [Free Democratic Party] govern together and were reelected—but for the first time in a German state parliament, a neo-Nazi party, the npd, kept its seats.
With the September 27 federal election now wide open, the left-wing daily Tageszeitung observed, “The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain” (August 31).
For some time the Trumpet has been monitoring the run-up to this important German election. We have done so fully expecting a result at odds with the predictions of the pundits, who had confidently said Angela Merkel would win in a trot. All of a sudden, barely a month away from the election, the whole complexion of the scenario is changing. This German election could turn on a dime.
That one or more of the larger parties must figure in a coalition government is a given. Yet which one of the major parties will be the one casting around to cobble together Germany’s next governing coalition is anyone’s guess at this juncture, just as much as is the question of which minority parties will be included.
There’s no doubt that the global financial crisis will have significant influence on how people vote. Yet two burning issues could weigh heavily on the outcome, should certain influential German elites play their cards right.
To read current German politics, one must read European energy politics.
To read Germany’s longer-term political vision, one must read the history of Imperial Germany.
Dealing with the question of energy politics, one must ask, why are ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his ex-foreign minister, Joshka Fischer, embedded as senior executives in major Russian gas pipeline projects? There’s more to this than meets the eye.
Schröder and Fischer are part of a veritable rogues gallery of German leaders who carry significant behind-the-scenes influence on German elites, in particular within the institutions that are most influential in the German bureaucracy, banking and big business.
Schröder, Fischer, the current German foreign minister, Steinmeier, and his party deputy, Franz Muntefering, all form a formidable force behind the scenes in German politics. This is more so the case when one considers that they each have a cozy relationship with Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with whom Chancellor Merkel has been particularly at odds during her term as Germany’s leader.
These four form a powerful cabal of resistance to Chancellor Merkel in her drive to retain the leadership in Germany. Given the right publicity, if Steinmeier chooses to play the energy card in a manner that convinces the public that his connections would more strongly mitigate any further threat of a winter freeze due to Russia turning off the gas tap to Europe—as has happened thrice in the past—he could quickly make up for his present lagging poll ratings.
Both Steinmeier and Putin hail from their respective nations’ spy networks, Steinmeier having headed Germany’s BND for the Schröder government and Putin being an ex-KGB agent. Steinmeier’s clandestine connections give him powerful unseen political clout of a nature not possessed by Chancellor Merkel. Polls notwithstanding, the uncharismatic Steinmeier may still give his boss a good challenge should he elect to press the right energy buttons.
But it is in considering the question of Germany’s long-term vision that we depart from most observers of the present political scene in Germany. Here we have to look to the German elites who have held this vision for generations, and passed it on through the gentlemen’s club of the German/Austrian hierarchy. These individuals have sought by various means over the past century—primarily financial, trade and the economy, then ultimately by military force—to bring their dream of European hegemony, if not global dominance, into being.
Recently our representatives in the United Kingdom interviewed Edward Spalton, chairman of the Euroskeptic group Campaign for an Independent Britain. Mr. Spalton is one of a number of Euroskeptics with whom we have had an association over the years. He and other Euroskeptic activists such as Rodney Atkinson, the late Norris McWhirter, Adrian Hilton and Britain’s oldest active member of the Conservative Party, Harry Beckough, have been deeply concerned at the political road being taken by Germany.
In response to the question, “Is Germany’s increasing assertiveness in dominating EU politics a result of deliberate intent or happenstance?”, Mr. Spalton responded:
Well, I think you only need to consult General De Gaulle on that, because when he met Dr. Hallstein, who was the first president of the EU Commission, he said, “If Dr. Hallstein is a sincere European, it is because he is first and foremost an ambitious German.” And then he went on to elaborate how through the EU, Germany would first of all rehabilitate itself in the eyes of other European countries, would gather together a constellation of other European powers who would assist Germany in regaining its unity. And indeed, that has come to pass.
And it has come to pass exactly as that wily old German politician of another generation, the Bavarian Franz Joseph Strauss, outlined it should in his book The Grand Design.
Elaborating on the long-term imperial vision that has dominated German politics over the past two centuries, Edward Spalton continued:
We have to remember that the idea of a common market, a customs union, was actually the way that Germany itself came into being, and as long ago as the 1830s and ’40s when Germany was still divided up into a large number of small states, there were economists and politicians who were clamoring to remove the customs barriers between the grand duchy of this and the elector of that so that the German economy could develop. … So, they did see the development of the common market, the EEC, very much in the same way as the history of the development of Germany itself as a political entity.
This is history of which the general public in the Anglo-Saxon nations remains largely ignorant and certainly quite disinterested, most particularly in the U.S. Yet it is a history that is about to slam the Anglo-Saxons smack in the face. A very few of the most astute observers of Germany see it, and given the history, fear the outcome of the political, economic and military direction that Germany is increasingly and assertively taking. But few there be indeed who can see the clear vision of biblical revelation which declares that the nation of Germany is rapidly returning to head up a final resurrection of the “Holy” Roman Empire.
Current German politics are leading very directly to that outcome, believe it or not!
You need to watch Germany. Most particularly you need to watch Germany over the next two months. A concentration of high-powered events that will convene in September may well consummate by the end of October in the consolidation of Germanic power at the head of the greatest single trading and political entity in the world.
To follow this trend, watch the outcome of each of the following events:
September
2: EU finance ministers meet in Brussels with central bankers to firm up a unified proposal for global regulation in preparation for mounting a solid unity bloc at G-2O summit.
4: EU foreign ministers meet in Strasbourg to discuss common defense and security policy and EU military involvement globally.
4-5: G-20 finance ministers and central bankers meet in London to discuss the global economic and financial crisis.
8: The Lisbon Treaty bill gets its second reading in the Bundestag.
15: The UN General Assembly meets under President Obama as rotating president of the Security Council for this month—to consider Middle East peace process.
17: The EU convenes an “extraordinary” heads of state meeting in Brussels to establish a unified position to address the upcoming G-20 summit.
18: The Bundesrat is scheduled to approve the Lisbon Treaty.
24-25: The G-20 holds a summit in Pittsburgh.
27: Germany holds federal elections.
October
2: Ireland votes on the Lisbon Treaty.
29-30: The EU Council meets to choose who will fill the two new and most senior posts in the EU, created by the Lisbon Treaty: minister of foreign affairs and president of the European Union.
To prepare you to understand the outcome of each of these events, how they impact on each other and what this all means for the future, read the current edition of the Trumpet magazine together with our booklet Daniel Unlocks Revelation. They will give you a perspective on events developing in Europe that will soon impact every nation on Earth!
But they will give you even more than that. They will give you a vision of real hope—not the sham, false hope promised by today’s political leaders, but what your Bible calls the “more sure word of prophecy” (2 Peter 1:19). That is real and sure hope in the future ahead! •
Ron Fraser’s column appears every Monday.
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