Rheinmetall's Secret Factories

February 14, 2025 by Richard Palmer

If you invested in Rheinmetall three years ago, you’d be very wealthy now. Shares worth €100 at the start of 2022 are worth €880 today. The war in Ukraine has pushed Europe into a crash rearmament program. Before the war, Rheinmetall was selling 70,000 artillery shells a year. Now it aims to make and sell 1.1 million.

And it’s not just European powers wanting to buy Rheinmetall’s weapons. But Germany’s constitution was designed to stop the nation treading the path to become a global military power again. It specifically requires all arms sales to be regulated by the federal government.

That government becomes more permissive as time goes on, but it’s still too restrictive for Rheinmetall. To get around these constitutional limits, it has set up a network of secret factories around the world with the help of local partners and subsidiaries.

In December, Investigate Europe exposed a “firmly calculated” plan to avoid these restrictions. Its journalists talked to Rheinmetall insiders and former employees, and they examined thousands of pages of documents. “Taken together, these conversations and documents paint a picture of a discreet export business where certain Rheinmetall customers stay in the shadows,” it reported. “Among the known clients are states that are linked to extensive human rights abuses and that supply ammunition to Russia.”

Denel Munition is at the heart of Rheinmetall’s work-around. In 2008, Rheinmetall bought a majority stake in the South African defense company. Why? “Rheinmetall was investing in a financially bankrupt company, but technically, Denel Munitions had tremendous potential,” a former manager of Rheinmetall Denel Munition told Investigate Europe. Rheinmetall was buying the ability to sell weapons overseas via a South African subsidiary not subject to its export restrictions. When it sold one of Denel’s factories in 2017, a Rheinmetall manager said it was one of 39 “similar facilities” worldwide.

Rheinmetall used Denel Munition to set up arms factories for countries around the world. Investigate Europe found evidence it helped set up factories in Indonesia, two Latin American countries and India. Earlier media reports show Rheinmetall setting up factories in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Helping other countries build their own ammunition plants is good business for Rheinmetall. Not only does it get the initial buy-out, but it “lock[s] the customers into their product range,” according to the Rheinmetall Denel Munition former manager. Recipients of the factories allegedly have to sign an exclusive deal to buy only Rheinmetall products.

Investigate Europe contrasted Rheinmetall’s open expansion in Europe—building new factories in Hungary, Romania, Lithuania and Ukraine—with its more secretive activities launched by its South African subsidiary. We don’t know where they are, how many there are, or what they’re making.

What does the German government think of the situation? The coalition government promised to change the law to prevent Rheinmetall from skirting export restrictions this way. But it has not done so. Why?

Alexander Lurz of Greenpeace Germany blamed “the new cozy relationship with the arms industry” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s also easy to see that the current situation allows the German government to have its cake and eat it: It can use arms sales to build alliances abroad, its defense industry can expand, and it doesn’t have to justify to voters its signing arms deals with questionable countries.

Those export restrictions exist to prevent history from repeating itself. But in skirting them, Germany, and Rheinmetall, is repeating history precisely.

After World War i, the Treaty of Versailles placed even stricter restrictions on Germany’s military. In the 1920s, Germany got around these restrictions by working with Russia, setting up secret bases, factories and airfields in Russia. In exchange, Russia trained with the German Army and shared in the military advantages.

Rheinmetall was one of the German companies operating in Russia in the 1920s. Its technicians were on the permanent staff of the Kama tank school, which opened in 1929. They developed “lightweight tractors” and “large tractors” with armor-piercing weapons and revolving turrets to test and train within Russia.

This was years before Germany would fight the United States. Adolf Hitler hadn’t even begun his rise to power. This cooperation meant Germany was able to burst suddenly on the scene with well-trained troops, modern weaponry and refined tactics when it publicly broke the Treaty of Versailles.

Rheinmetall’s use of Denel means it can forge military links with countries away from democratic scrutiny. What else could it be hiding?

Rheinmetall was also present at a meeting of top Nazis when they agreed to go underground and rebuild in secret. On Aug. 10, 1944, Nazis and industrial leaders met in the Hotel Rotes Haus in Strasbourg, France. “From now on also German industry must realize that the war cannot be won and that it must take steps in preparation for a postwar commercial campaign,” states a report of the meeting. “Each industrialist must make contacts and alliances with foreign firms, but this must be done individually and without attracting any suspicion.” They agreed to use the same playbook from the 1920s.

With all this history, ignoring Rheinmetall’s secret factories would be extremely foolish. Yet Investigate Europe’s report has received little attention. We have to ask: Could this be about much more than profit and loss? Germany and its arms companies have publicly boosted their military power significantly over the last few years. But what are they doing in secret?

“We don’t understand German thoroughness,” said Herbert W. Armstrong, founder of the Trumpet’s predecessor, the Plain Truth, in May 1945. “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 …. They plan to come back and to win on the third try.”

That forecast may seem overly dramatic to some. But so much of it has already been fulfilled. Reports from every branch of the German government have confirmed that Nazis went underground after the war ended. They conspired to keep each other hidden and avoid punishment for their crimes. Rheinmetall is working in alliance with foreign firms without attracting attention right now. Mr. Armstrong was right.

He didn’t have any direct knowledge of secret meetings. Instead he had an even more precise warning: scriptures written thousands of years ago that describe Germany’s behavior precisely.

Revelation 17:8 describes a beast, symbolic of a major world power, that “was, and is not, and yet is.” This beast exists, then vanishes—only to then “ascend out of the bottomless pit.” You could say it comes out of nowhere—from “underground.”

Here is how Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains this prophecy in his booklet Prophesy Again: “During World War ii, we saw the Hitler-Mussolini axis, but then it disappeared from the scene. It ‘was not’! And yet, God says, ‘it is’! The Axis powers lost the war, but as Mr. Armstrong preached time and again, they just went underground—into ‘the bottomless pit’ (verse 8). They’re still there—they’re just underground.”

This passage adds something vital: What goes underground will come back up again. While some things—like Rheinmetall’s foreign adventures—are secret, much is rising to the surface.

Revelation 17 says that when this power fully ascends, “the people who belong to this world … will be amazed at the reappearance of this beast …” (verse 8; New Living Translation). Just like prior to World War ii, a lot of its buildup will be hidden from public view, so it will burst suddenly onto the scene.

Built into this same passage is another prophecy—a prophecy of an individual God would use to expose this beast. Verse 10 says, “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”

These seven kings reign one after the other. But during the time of the sixth king, a man would be there to explain what this scripture means, to teach the world what is happening.

The same individual is on the scene once the sixth king has disappeared, when this beast “was, and is not.” In Prophesy Again, Mr. Flurry writes: “The beast disappears from the scene for a time, and a prophet must show people what the truth is. … This revelation is about the period when Mr. Armstrong … was doing this work of God. God revealed to him secrets about this sixth resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire, which ‘was, and is not, and yet is.’”

This is how Mr. Armstrong could pinpoint what was going on within Nazi Germany in 1945. These documents were all classified, the investigations not yet done. But “God revealed to him secrets,” as Mr. Flurry writes.

This is why the Bible says that beast “was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit” (verse 8). The verb tense here is important. While Mr. Armstrong was alive, this beast “was, and is not.” Mr. Armstrong was there during World War ii and when the beast went underground. But the beast’s ascension out of this bottomless pit is future tense—it was to happen later, once the man explaining all this passed from the scene. Mr. Armstrong died in 1986. Just three years later, Germany unified, and soon the early signs of its rise were visible.

This beast is still rising today, but it is a mystery to the world. You, however, can understand. God reveals secrets to the man He is using.

“The Bible really comes alive when we know specifically what is happening,” writes Mr. Flurry. Understand these secrets, and you can understand world events. More importantly, your Bible comes alive, revealing the great, all-powerful God who reveals the secret plans of the world’s most powerful nations.