Hint: It has to do with oil, and it nearly worked in World War ii .

Seventy-five years after Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, Germany is once again a major military power. It is the world’s fourth-largest weapons exporter. Last year, German arms manufacturers sold $8 billion worth of weapons. Most of these weapons went to the German military, but around 15 percent were exported to Germany’s strategic partners around the world. Leopard 2 battle tanks and high-tech German armaments were an especially hot commodity among Arab monarchs, North African autocrats and Latin American presidents.

Like most nations that sell weapons, Germany is after more than profit. It is building military alliances. In particular, Germany is arming Sunni Arab nations in a long-term strategy to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran controls 15 percent of the world’s oil. The German-led European Union is the world’s second-biggest energy importer. Around 30 percent of EU oil imports and 39 percent of EU gas imports come from Russia. Germany is dependent on this oil and gas. United States President Donald Trump is calling on Germans to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas instead, so they will not be “totally controlled by Russia.” But this would make Germany more dependent on America.

If the Germans want the EU to become a self-sustaining, self-sufficient military power, they need Middle East oil.

The geopolitical realities Germany faces today are similar to the ones it faced during World War ii. In many ways, the European theater was a fight over the petroleum Adolf Hitler needed to fuel the German Reich.

The Nazis made several strategic mistakes that contributed to their ultimate defeat. But Bible prophecy shows that the Germans have learned from these mistakes and have devised a secret strategy to win World War iii.

“We don’t understand German thoroughness,” the late Herbert W. Armstrong told World Tomorrow radio listeners the day after Nazi Germany surrendered. “From the very start of World War ii, they have considered the possibility of losing this second round, as they did the first—and they have carefully, methodically planned, in such eventuality, the third round—World War iii! Hitler has lost. This round of war, in Europe, is over. And the Nazis have now gone underground. … Now a Nazi underground is methodically planned. They plan to come back and to win on the third try.”

Why the Nazis Lost World War II

World War ii began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. After the Nazis conquered Poland and France, Adolf Hitler sent a Nazi force to North Africa under the command of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. Four months later, he launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. These invasions of North Africa and the Soviet Union changed Germany’s war from a one-front conflict against a weakened Britain into a three-front fight against Britain, the Soviet Union and France’s North African colonies.

Why did Hitler invade North Africa and the Soviet Union before he conquered Britain? He needed oil.

Rommel was trying to capture the Suez Canal, which would have opened a route to the oil field of the Middle East. Meanwhile, Field Marshall Wilhelm List was trying to conquer the Soviet oil field in the Caucasus Mountains. British troops halted Rommel’s advance at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Russian troops halted List’s advance at the Battle of Stalingrad. These two battles were the beginning of the end for Hitler’s Third Reich.

“By 1944, German access to oil had been seriously impaired—and the results were devastating,” wrote Gregory Brew in “How Oil Defeated the Nazis” (OilPrice.com). “The Luftwaffe, Germany’s mighty air force, was grounded. Panzer divisions couldn’t maneuver for fear of using up precious oil. German Army units lacked mobility and couldn’t respond quickly when the Allied armies arrived on the shores of Normandy. Lack of fuel crippled the German Army. … On May 8, 1945, Hitler committed suicide, after his armies crumbled from a lack of men, equipment—and fuel.”

Many military minds believe that Hitler could have won World War ii if he had directed Germany’s forces south instead of east. With a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union already in place, and most of Western Europe under his control, Hitler could have chosen to invade the Middle East before attacking Russia. How would this have worked out?

“A German Mediterranean option would have been very different than invading the Soviet Union,” wrote Michael Peck in “What If Hitler Never Invaded Russia During World War II?” “Instead of a huge Axis land army of 3 million men, the Mediterranean would have been a contest of ships and aircraft, supporting relatively small numbers of ground troops through the vast distances of the Middle East. With the Soviet Union remaining neutral (and continuing to ship resources to Germany under the Nazi-Soviet Pact), Germany would have been able to concentrate the Luftwaffe in the Mediterranean. … Assuming the Axis were successful in the Middle East, the Soviets would have faced a German-Italian expeditionary force advancing north through the Caucasus (perhaps Turkey would have joined the rising Axis tide). Another year would also have given Germany more time to loot and exploit the resources of conquered Western Europe.”

In fact, Field Marshall Rommel lamented that Germany did not enact a similar strategy to the scenario Peck described. After his defeat at the Battle of El Alamein, the famed commander wrote, “We could have defeated and destroyed the British Field Army, and that would have opened the road to the Suez Canal. … With the entire Mediterranean coastline in our hands, supplies could have been shipped to North Africa unmolested. It would then have been possible to thrust forward into Persia and Iraq in order to cut off the Russians from Basra [which became a major source of Russian oil after Hitler invaded], take possession of the oil fields and create a base for an attack on southern Russia.”

Rommel believed Germany would have won World War ii—if it had invaded the Middle East first!

Germany’s Whirlwind Strategy

Together with firms in Austria, France and the Netherlands, German energy companies are spending over $5 billion to build a Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea. This pipeline will transport 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to Germany each year, reducing Western Europe’s reliance on gas from Eastern Europe and from the United States.

But German leaders do not want to be dependent on Russian gas forever. In fact, Germany’s government opposes President Trump’s economic sanction against Iran because these sanctions hurt Iran’s biggest oil company, Persian Gulf Petrochemical Industries Co. Germany is trying to set up a new payment mechanism, called Instex, which it can use to buy Iranian oil. This EU-backed system will be based on barter transaction, thus eliminating incriminating money trails. It will allow European firms to buy Iranian oil without risk of prosecution for circumventing U.S. sanctions.

The fact that Germany is making such energy deals with Russia and Iran reveals how badly it wants to distance itself from America. “Many elite Germans feel their nation has now gotten all it can from the U.S. and they are ready to move on,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “Germany and Russia’s Secret War Against America.” “Some powerful Germans today are thinking more and more about the Holy Roman Empire, and they want modern Germany to assume more power of its own in the spirit of that empire. They want to establish Europe as a mighty, German-led superpower.”

Germany is undermining the U.S. to get Iranian oil, but that does not mean that it is a true friend of Iran. Over the past two decades, German arms manufacturers have sold over $3 billion worth of weapons to Iran’s Sunni Arab rivals in the Middle East. And the Bundeswehr currently has over 2,000 troops involved in Middle Eastern operations. These weapons sales and strategic troop deployments are meant to strengthen Arab states at Iran’s expense.

Now that horizontal drilling and hydraulic “fracking” technology have set America on a path to energy independence, President Trump is talking about pulling more and more U.S. troops out of the Middle East. This means that Germany will have to step up its military presence in this volatile region if it wants an alternative to Russian gas!

“The Iranians are so focused on conquering their own objectives that they don’t see what the Germans are doing,” Mr. Flurry wrote in “The Whirlwind Prophecy.” “They don’t recognize how Germany is planning for the bigger war to come! No one but the Trumpet recognizes it! But the facts are visible for anyone to see. Germany has expected to clash with Iran, and it has been working on a strategy for a decade or more. That strategy is almost complete. Germany has surrounded Iran.”

The Trumpet is able to recognize German’s strategy because our news analysis is informed by Bible prophecy!

How World War III Will Start

At the end of World War ii, Herbert W. Armstrong prophesied that the Germans would learn from the tactical mistakes they made during World War i and World War ii, and rise once again to superpower status.

“In World War i, the Kaiser, allied with Austria, sought to conquer France, Britain and America,” he wrote. “American industry finally beat him. In World War ii, Hitler tried to conquer the world, first by taking Austria and the Sudetenland thru diplomatic gangsterism; then second, with lightning-quick war, taking Poland, Denmark and Norway, Holland, Belgium and France; and third, while holding these nations by the throat with his Gestapo, and allied with his junior partner Mussolini, to conquer Russia on the east and Britain on the west. But again, American industry, and three acts of God, at Dunkirk, El Alamein and the destruction of the German hydrogen-bomb plant at Peenemuende defeated Hitler. But this time the Nazis plan to sidestep the causes of past defeats. Instead of exhausting their own strength by holding European nations as captives at the expense of vital Gestapo manpower, they plan to head and dominate a United States of Europe—and add the manpower of those nations to their own military divisions. And secondly, they plan to strike their first blow, not at France or Poland in Europe, but with hydrogen bombs by surprise attack on the centers of American industry!”

Mr. Armstrong knew that God gave America and Britain victory in World War ii. At Dunkirk, God miraculously saved the British Expeditionary Force by sending a dense fog to hide their evacuation back to England. At El Alamein, God miraculously caused British mobile radio interception stations to start picking up German spy reports vital to their ultimate victory. And at Peenemuende, God miraculously guided Allied planes to destroy Germany’s secret nuclear weapons research center.

But Mr. Armstrong also prophesied that if America and Britain forgot God and turned away from His laws, then God would raise up Germany once again to punish the Anglo-Saxon people for their sins. The book of Isaiah calls modern Germany by its ancient name, Assyria, and says God will use it as “the rod of mine anger” (Isaiah 10:5). The book of Daniel refers to Germany as “the king of the north,” and says that this king will conquer “the king of the south” and many other nations.

“And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over. … He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps. But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many” (Daniel 11:40, 42-44).

Since the 1990s, Mr. Flurry has forecast that radical Islam, led by Iran, will fulfill the role of this biblical king of the south. So these verses in the book of Daniel reveal the order in which Germany will defeat its enemies. First German leaders will take Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s advice and conquer Iran, the Middle East and North Africa. Then, once Germany has the vast oil resources of this region at its disposal, it will be prompted by tidings out of the East to “go forth with great fury” and destroy many other nations—including the U.S., Great Britain and the State of Israel.

Finally, once the “centers of American industry” are wiped out, the king of the north will launch a preemptive strike against Russia and its Asian allies (Revelation 9:1-11). The history of both World Wars i and ii will have taught Germany that it does not have a chance at defeating Russia until it has taken Iran’s oil and wiped out America’s industry.

To counter this attack, the Bible foretells that Russia and China will amass an army of 200 million men (verse 16). Germany’s secret strategy to win World War iii will ultimately fail in the end.

The Bible records that mankind would face extinction in a devastating nuclear war between Europe and Asia, unless Jesus Christ Himself intervened in world affairs (Matthew 24:22). Fortunately, the Bible records a definitive promise from God that Jesus Christ will intervene to end this madness. After accumulating 6,000 years of evil and suffering, the human race will finally be ready to listen to God and be taught His way of life!