The spark in the east
Two men who never met, two languages, two confessions, a generation apart — and yet the same image: fleets facing one another in the Mediterranean, a war flaring up in the east, and a Third World War that begins precisely there. This page sets both traditions side by side: the Bavarian well-digger Alois Irlmaier and the Greek monk Paisios of Mount Athos — with their sentences, their sources, and what speaks against them.
Everyone is calling peace, shalom! That is when it will happen.
Alois Irlmaier — as handed down
Painting by Ivan Aivazovsky: view across the Bosporus to Constantinople in evening light, sailing ships before the city
Constantinople on the Bosporus, painted by Ivan Aivazovsky. Half the tradition circles around this city: Paisios saw it returning to Greek hands — after a war he foresaw between Russia and Turkey.
When the Third World War is mentioned, most people think first of tanks in Central Europe. The tradition itself begins differently. In both Alois Irlmaier and Paisios of Mount Athos, events start not at the Rhine but further east: in the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Balkans, Anatolia and finally at the gates of Jerusalem. In both versions the Middle East conflict is not one war among others — it is the beginning of the Third World War.
Alois Irlmaier (1894–1959), the best-known German seer of the Third World War, was a well-digger in Freilassing in Upper Bavaria, Catholic, without schooling, and described what he saw in a few spare sentences. Paisios of Mount Athos (1924–1994) was an Orthodox monk, born in Cappadocia, driven out of Turkey, and spoke to thousands of visitors who came to his hermitage. One spoke Bavarian, the other Greek. They knew nothing of each other.
And yet the same sentence stands in both traditions — Irlmaier: “large naval formations face each other in the Mediterranean”; in the words attributed to Paisios: “The Mediterranean fills with fleets from all nations.” That correspondence is why both stand side by side on this page. It is remarkable — and, as set out in detail below, it is not proof.
For with Paisios the source situation is even more difficult than with Irlmaier. The monk was canonised in 2015; the geopolitical prophecies circulating under his name, however, are disputed by close confidants, and the Esphigmenou monastery has expressly distanced itself from them. Anyone reading this page should learn both: what is handed down — and why serious doubts attach to it.
Schematic map of the eastern Mediterranean showing the movements as handed down: Russia attacks Turkey, Turkey assaults Greece and Israel, the Russians advance to Jerusalem, the two hundred million cross the Euphrates, fleets stand in the Mediterranean
The movements as handed down in the eastern Mediterranean, assembled from the place names given by both seers. The rendering is schematic: it shows directions and relations, not front lines and not scale.
Irlmaier said less about the Middle East than about Bavaria, but the little he said stands at a decisive point: for him it is the portent by which one recognises that the Third World War is imminent.
Irlmaier’s best-known sentence about the Middle East is also his most disturbing, because it asserts the opposite of what one would expect. The signal is not escalation but détente: “Everyone is calling peace, shalom! That is when it will happen.”
The Hebrew word in the mouth of a Bavarian well-digger who never learned a foreign language is one of the details his followers find remarkable. In substance the sentence describes a situation in which diplomacy is reporting successes, treaties are being signed and peace settlements celebrated — and it is precisely at that moment that disaster breaks. Anyone waiting for warning signs is, on this account, waiting for the wrong thing.
The closeness to a biblical verse Irlmaier probably knew is striking: “When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them” (1 Thessalonians 5:3). Whether he took the phrase from Scripture or saw it independently cannot be decided. But it shows how closely the seers’ images depend on biblical models — a point that cannot be passed over in judging them.
Alois Irlmaier — as handed down, schauungen.de
The deceptive peace is followed in the tradition by the outbreak that, for Irlmaier, opens the Third World War: “A new Middle East war suddenly flares up, large naval formations face each other in the Mediterranean — the situation is tense.” Three elements are contained in that sentence, and all three are remarkably concrete.
First: the war flares up “suddenly”, without lead-up. Second: it is a Middle Eastern war, not a European one. Third — and this is the real point — the tension shifts immediately to the sea. It is not land armies that face each other, but naval formations. For a man who had never been to the Mediterranean and whose world lay between the Watzmann and the Wendelstein, that is a very specific image.
Historically it is also the most plausible. Since the Second World War the eastern Mediterranean has been a sea area in which the fleets of the great powers observe one another permanently: the American Sixth Fleet, the Soviet and later Russian Mediterranean squadron, the navies of the NATO littoral states. Anyone looking there for an escalation is bound to find it on the water.
A new Middle East war suddenly flares up, large naval formations face each other in the Mediterranean — the situation is tense.
Here Irlmaier’s vision takes a turn that distinguishes it from most Middle East prophecies. For him the war in the east is not the cause of the world war but only its stage. The actual trigger falls elsewhere: “But the truly igniting spark is thrown into the powder keg in the Balkans: I see a ‘great one’ fall; a bloody dagger lies beside him. Then it goes blow upon blow.”
This is a remarkably sober construction. While all attention is directed at the Middle East — at the fleets, at the negotiations, at the call of shalom — the decisive thing happens in the Balkans: a political assassination, two paid men, a third high-ranking figure. Only then do the armies set off, and the war becomes European.
Anyone looking for the connection between the two theatres in Irlmaier’s tradition finds it not in causality but in simultaneity. The Middle East war binds the attention and the fleets; the Balkans supply the occasion. The further course — the three army columns, the yellow line, the last battle at Cologne — is set out stage by stage on the page about the invasion.
The truly igniting spark is thrown into the powder keg in the Balkans: I see a “great one” fall; a bloody dagger lies beside him.
What Alois Irlmaier is in Germany, Elder Paisios is in Greece: the seer everyone appeals to. His tradition is far more detailed than Irlmaier’s — and far more disputed.
Paisios was born Arsenios Eznepidis on 25 July 1924 in Pharasa in Cappadocia — on the territory of present-day Turkey, a few weeks before the Greek-Turkish population exchange. His family fled to Greece and settled in Konitsa in Epirus. The boy who was later to speak about Turkey was himself a refugee from Anatolia; that explains part of the force with which his words were received in Greece.
After military service in the Greek Civil War (1945–1949) he entered monastic life in 1950. Decades on Mount Athos followed, interrupted by periods in Sinai. From 1979 he lived in the hermitage of Panagouda and received hundreds of visitors daily from all over the world — farmers and bishops, students and politicians. He died on 12 July 1994 at the monastery of Souroti near Thessaloniki.
On 13 January 2015 the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople canonised him. The order matters: he was canonised for his spiritual life, his asceticism, his counsel and his humility — not for prophecies. By far the greatest part of what is handed down from him concerns prayer, repentance and the bearing of suffering. The geopolitical sentences make up a vanishingly small fraction of it.
In the tradition the beginning lies not in an attack but in a falling-out: “A quarrel among allies will lead Turkey into a war.” What is meant is a rupture within an alliance to which Turkey belongs — for readers in the 1990s the reference to NATO, which Turkey joined in 1952, was obvious.
Out of this quarrel, the tradition holds, Turkey enters a war which it begins itself and which in the end destroys it. Paisios is said to have stressed this repeatedly: at first the Turks will believe they are winning — and it is precisely this apparent early success that leads to catastrophe.
A quarrel among allies will lead Turkey into a war.
Paisios of Mount Athos — attributed tradition
The part of the tradition that receives most attention in Greece concerns Greece itself. “In attacking Greece Turkey will lose almost its entire fleet, but on land the Turks will push towards Thessaloniki.” The attack thus comes on two tracks: across the Aegean and across Thrace.
At sea it ends, on this account, in catastrophe for the attacker — almost the entire Turkish fleet is lost. On land, by contrast, Turkish formations advance and push towards Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city. One place is named explicitly: “The city of Xanthi will have to be completely rebuilt.” Xanthi lies in Western Thrace, directly on the route between the Turkish border and Thessaloniki.
What is striking is what does not stand here: Greece does not win this war by its own strength. In the tradition the Greek role is consistently passive — the country is attacked, it holds, but the decision falls elsewhere.
In attacking Greece Turkey will lose almost its entire fleet, but on land the Turks will push towards Thessaloniki.
The core of the whole Paisios tradition concerning the Third World War is the Russo-Turkish war. “Turkey will wage war against Russia”, it runs — and the outcome is already fixed in the same tradition: “Russia will destroy Turkey completely.”
The sequence as told in the Greek collections: at first the Turks appear to be winning. That success tempts them onward. Then the tide turns, Russian superiority prevails, and Turkey collapses as a state. “Turkey will disappear from the map” is the harshest formulation.
Concerning the population a threefold division is handed down which recurs in almost every version: one third of the Turks will withdraw into the depths of Anatolia or to Mesopotamia, one third will die in the war, and one third will become Christian. That last point shows what the tradition is actually aiming at: it is not a military prediction but a religious one — it is about conversion, not territory.
Russia will destroy Turkey completely.
After the collapse the tradition has the partition of the country, and it is given with unusual precision: “One third of the land goes to the Armenians, the second third to the Kurds, and the last third the Russians will give to the Greeks.” Other versions speak of three or four parts.
The allocation follows the historical settlement geography: the east to the Armenians, whose historical territory lay around Erzurum and Ararat; the south-east to the Kurds, who form the majority there to this day; the west to the Greeks, whose ancestors lived in Smyrna and along the whole Aegean coast until 1922. Anyone who knows the population history of Anatolia recognises here not a vision but a reversal of the twentieth century.
That is precisely where the criticism sets in — and it is justified. This partition corresponds so exactly to the national aspirations of three peoples that the suspicion is close at hand that it arose from them and not from a vision.
One third of the land goes to the Armenians, the second third to the Kurds, and the last third the Russians will give to the Greeks.
At the end stands the image for whose sake the whole tradition is read in Greece: “Istanbul will come back into Greek hands and will become Constantinople again.” The city that fell to the Ottomans in 1453 returns; the Hagia Sophia — a mosque since 1453, a museum from 1934 and a mosque again since 2020 — is, on this account, reopened as a church.
Decisive, however, is the way Paisios allegedly qualified the matter. The Greeks do not take the city themselves: “We will take Constantinople back, but not we ourselves. Because the majority of our young people have become degraded, we are not capable of such a thing. Nevertheless God will arrange it that others will take the City and give it to us.”
This sentence is the most important of the entire collection, because it reverses its direction. It is not a national promise but a reproach: you are not worthy of it; you will receive it as a gift although you do not deserve it. Anyone reading the prophecy as a Greek triumph reads against its own wording. That is exactly what Orthodox critics point out — the promise, if anything, is tied to a spiritual renewal and not to arms.
We will take Constantinople back, but not we ourselves. Nevertheless God will arrange it that others will take the City and give it to us.
In the tradition the movement does not end in Anatolia. “The Russians destroy Turkey and march to the gates of Jerusalem. They will occupy this zone for six months.” It is the point at which the vision goes furthest beyond anything that could be placed historically — and at the same time the point at which it leans most clearly on a biblical text.
For an army coming up from the north and turning against the land of Israel is the theme of Ezekiel 38 and 39: the march of Gog from the land of Magog, “out of the uttermost parts of the north”, with a great host against the mountains of Israel. These chapters have for centuries been the reference point of every prophecy about an attack on Israel; reading them as Russia is not new but has been widespread since the nineteenth century.
The time given also has a biblical ring: six months of occupation — a limited, measured span of the kind usual in apocalyptic. Whether Paisios named this figure or whether it was attributed to him cannot be settled from the available collections.
The Russians destroy Turkey and march to the gates of Jerusalem. They will occupy this zone for six months.
Besides the war against Russia and Greece the tradition names a third: “Turkey will wage war against Israel.” With that the whole eastern Mediterranean is at war — the Aegean, Anatolia, the Levant.
The Middle East itself becomes the real battlefield in this vision: it will become “an arena of war”, and “much blood” will be shed. One of the sharpest formulations handed down says the arena will be Palestine and their grave the Dead Sea.
And then the vision opens into the immeasurable: the Chinese will come across the Euphrates with an army of two hundred million and push as far as Jerusalem. Here the reference back to the Bible is entirely open — the number stands verbatim in Revelation: “the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand” (Revelation 9:16), and the drying up of the Euphrates “that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared” is in Revelation 16:12.
Turkey will wage war against Israel.
One final sign is named in the tradition, and it is the most consequential: the destruction of the Mosque of Omar — meaning the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It is said to mark the start of work on rebuilding the Temple of Solomon.
With that the link is made to one of the oldest motifs of Christian expectation of the end. The apostle Paul writes of the “man of sin” who “sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4); Jesus speaks of the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15). In this line the building of the Temple is not progress but preparation — the stage for the Antichrist.
Paisios indisputably spoke on this circle of themes; his warnings against a worldwide system of control and against the number 666 are documented in several collections and stand close in substance to what is said on the page about Slavik Krasheninnikov. Where exactly the attested warning ends and later embellishment begins cannot be cleanly separated here either.
A characteristic sign is the destruction of the Mosque of Omar, for it means the beginning of the work of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon.
Irlmaier and Paisios are separated by language, confession and a generation. At four points, however, they say the same thing — and at one they clearly part.
The strongest common point. Irlmaier: “large naval formations face each other in the Mediterranean”. Attributed to Paisios: “The Mediterranean fills with fleets from all nations.” Two men who knew nothing of each other describe the same sea area in the same condition.
Neither has events begin in Central Europe, but in the eastern Mediterranean. For Irlmaier the Middle East war is the portent, for Paisios the main theatre. In both cases Central Europe is not the starting point but the consequence.
In Irlmaier the three army columns come into Germany from the east; in Paisios Russia destroys Turkey and advances to Jerusalem. Russia’s role is the same in both traditions: the decisive military factor of the whole course of events.
In neither Irlmaier nor Paisios does the Third World War end in the extinction of the world. Irlmaier sees “three strokes” and afterwards a long, warm time of peace; the Paisios tradition knows an occupation of six months and a new order after it. Both visions are changes of epoch, not ends of the world.
Here they diverge. For Paisios the east itself is the cause — the quarrel among allies, the Turkish attack, the Russian counterblow. For Irlmaier the east is only the stage; the igniting spark falls in the Balkans, through an assassination. Anyone wanting to read both traditions together must let this contradiction stand.
The order of the Third World War as it assembles from both traditions. It carries no dates — neither Irlmaier nor Paisios named a year for any of these stages.
Before
“Everyone is calling peace, shalom!” Diplomacy is reporting successes — and for Irlmaier that is precisely the sign.
Rupture
A falling-out within the alliance leads Turkey into war, according to Paisios.
Outbreak
The war flares up suddenly; the Mediterranean fills with fleets from all nations.
Attack
At sea against Greece — almost the whole fleet is lost; on land a push towards Thessaloniki, Xanthi is destroyed.
The turn
The initial Turkish success is reversed. “Russia will destroy Turkey completely.”
Collapse
One third to the Armenians, one third to the Kurds, one third through the Russians to the Greeks.
The city
Istanbul becomes Greek again, the Hagia Sophia is reopened — given, not won.
South
The Russians move further south and occupy the zone for six months.
East
An army from the Far East crosses the Euphrates and reaches Jerusalem.
Meanwhile
While everyone looks east, in Irlmaier the assassination falls in the Balkans — and the war becomes European.
Every place named or unmistakably described in the two traditions concerning the Middle East and the Third World War.
The Mediterranean
The first theatre in both seers: “large naval formations face each other” (Irlmaier) — “fills with fleets from all nations” (attributed to Paisios).
Constantinople / Istanbul
Returns to Greek hands in the tradition; the Hagia Sophia is reopened. Not conquered by the Greeks themselves but handed to them.
Thessaloniki
Objective of the Turkish land advance across Thrace.
Xanthi
A city in Western Thrace named explicitly: “will have to be completely rebuilt”.
The Aegean
Scene of the naval battle in which Turkey, according to the tradition, loses almost its entire fleet.
Eastern Anatolia (Erzurum, Ararat)
Falls to the Armenians in the partition — the historical Armenian settlement area.
South-eastern Anatolia (Diyarbakır)
Falls to the Kurds.
Western Anatolia (Smyrna/Izmir)
Given by the Russians to the Greeks — the coast where Greeks lived until 1922.
Jerusalem
The Russians advance to the gates and occupy the zone for six months.
The Temple Mount / Mosque of Omar
Its destruction is held to mark the start of the rebuilding of the Temple.
The Dead Sea
In one of the sharpest formulations: the arena will be Palestine, their grave the Dead Sea.
The Euphrates
Crossing point of the army from the Far East — with a clear reference back to Revelation 16:12.
The Balkans
For Irlmaier the place of the assassination that triggers the actual war — not the Middle East.
Neither Irlmaier’s nor Paisios’ vision can be verified. Something else can be examined: whether the constellation described holds up historically at all. It does — so well, in fact, that the counter-argument can be built from it too.
Between 1568 and 1918 Russia and the Ottoman Empire fought twelve wars against one another — no other pair of European powers comes near that number. The antagonism is not a vision but the basic constant of Eastern European history across four centuries. Anyone growing up in twentieth-century Greece knew that series.
The image of the destroyed Turkish fleet also has a historical model, and a famous one: on 30 November 1853 a Russian squadron almost completely destroyed the Ottoman fleet in the harbour of Sinope. The event triggered the Crimean War and was captured by Ivan Aivazovsky in a painting every child in Russia knows. To say that Turkey will lose its fleet is, in this region, to say nothing new.
Constantinople in turn is the fixed point of Greek historical memory as such. The city fell on 29 May 1453; the idea of recovering it — the “Great Idea”, Megali Idea — was official Greek state doctrine between 1844 and 1922 and ended in the catastrophe of Smyrna. A prophecy that fulfils precisely this idea meets a collective longing that has been awake for centuries.
And Turkey has belonged to NATO since 1952. A “quarrel among allies” is therefore not a mysterious image but an obvious concern of every political observer since the 1960s — at the latest since the Cyprus conflict, which in 1974 brought two NATO states to the brink of war.
There is also a date on which this tradition became visible at a stroke: on 24 November 2015 the Turkish air force shot down a Russian Su-24 fighter on the Syrian border. Within days the texts attributed to Paisios spread in Greece by the million; international newspapers reported on the phenomenon. The war did not come — but the episode shows how such texts work: they are not read when nothing happens, but at the moment when something does.
From this follows restraint in both directions. Historical plausibility proves nothing: anyone who knows the region’s history arrives at the same scenarios without having seen anything. But neither does it refute — for an image does not become false merely because it can also be argued for.
The truly igniting spark is thrown into the powder keg in the Balkans.
The city of Xanthi will have to be completely rebuilt.
Istanbul will come back into Greek hands and will become Constantinople again.
The Mediterranean fills with fleets from all nations.
The questions asked most often on this subject — answered briefly, with pointers to the detailed sections above.
According to the tradition attributed to him the war begins with a quarrel among allies; Turkey attacks and appears to win at first, but is then wholly defeated by Russia. The country is partitioned: one third to the Armenians, one third to the Kurds, one third through the Russians to the Greeks. Whether Paisios ever said this is disputed — close confidants deny it.
Yes, that is part of the tradition: the attack comes by sea and by land. At sea Turkey loses almost its entire fleet; on land Turkish formations push across Thrace towards Thessaloniki, with the city of Xanthi destroyed. Greece does not win by its own strength in this vision — the decision comes through Russia.
The tradition says that after destroying Turkey the Russians march “to the gates of Jerusalem” and occupy that zone for six months. The motif is old: an army coming up from the uttermost north against Israel is the theme of Ezekiel 38 and 39 — the march of Gog from the land of Magog.
Three things. First the deceptive peace: “Everyone is calling peace, shalom! That is when it will happen.” Second the sudden outbreak: “A new Middle East war suddenly flares up, large naval formations face each other in the Mediterranean.” Third the qualification: the actual spark falls not there but in the Balkans.
That is the core of the Greek tradition — though with a sharp qualification that is usually passed over. Paisios is said to have stated that the Greeks will not take the city themselves: they are not capable of it, and God will arrange for others to take it and give it to them. The promise is thus a reproach, not a triumph.
In the tradition an army from the Far East that crosses the Euphrates and pushes as far as Jerusalem. The number comes verbatim from Revelation (9:16), and the drying up of the Euphrates “that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared” stands in Revelation 16:12. Here the reference back to the Bible is open.
Very probably not in the form in which they circulate. Paisios published none of them himself; the collection comes from the hieromonk Makarios (1990). Several close confidants of the elder deny that he uttered such political prophecies, and the Esphigmenou monastery has expressly distanced itself. Paisios was canonised in 2015 for his spiritual life, not for predictions.
Neither of the two named a date. Every year in circulation comes from interpreters. About the timing Jesus himself ruled out all calculation: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man” (Matthew 24:36).
This page presents two traditions about the Third World War. It does not claim that either will come to pass — and with one of them it must expressly advise against treating it as established.
First, on Paisios: the source situation is weak. The elder published none of these prophecies in his lifetime. The geopolitical texts go back essentially to the hieromonk Makarios, who issued them in 1990. Several people close to Paisios have denied that he spoke in this way; they point out that he was unpolitical and that his concern was the spiritual life. The Esphigmenou monastery has stated publicly that there is no evidence for such predictions. Orthodox authors who venerate Paisios likewise warn against turning a few pages about Constantinople into a national promise, when he left thousands of pages about repentance and prayer.
Second, on Irlmaier: here too not a word comes from his own hand. Everything handed down goes back to collectors, above all to Conrad Adlmaier, whose editions of 1950, 1955 and 1961 contradict one another at important points. His record also includes the 1947 charge of fraud and “trickery” — with acquittal for lack of evidence — as well as fifteen previous convictions, seven of them for fraud.
Third, on method: both traditions are strongly grounded in Scripture. The call of shalom corresponds to 1 Thessalonians 5:3; the march from the north against Israel is Ezekiel 38; the two hundred million and the dried-up Euphrates stand in Revelation 9 and 16; the building of the Temple belongs to 2 Thessalonians 2. This may mean that the seers recognised biblical images. It may equally mean that their interpreters read biblical images into them. Both are possible, and neither can be proved.
Fourth, and this is the standard: Scripture itself lays down the rule. “Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:19–21). Both stand there — do not despise, and test. And about the hour Jesus ruled out all reckoning: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36).
Whoever reads this page should therefore neither take fright nor start counting. What Jesus said about wars and rumours of wars ends not with a number but with a posture: “See that you are not alarmed” (Matthew 24:6).
schauungen.de — Alois Irlmaier, source collection with comparison of editions (https://schauungen.de/wiki/Alois_Irlmaier)
irlmaier.com — “Ein neuer Nahostkrieg” (https://irlmaier.com/ein-neuer-nahostkrieg/)
Conrad Adlmaier: “Blick in die Zukunft”, editions 1950, 1955, 1961 — principal source of all Irlmaier quotations
Wikipedia — Paisios of Mount Athos, biography, canonisation and criticism of the attribution of the prophecies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisios_of_Mount_Athos)
Hieromonk Makarios: “Words of Wisdom and Grace of Elder Paisios the Hagiorite”, 1990 — origin of the geopolitical texts
harmageddon.net — German collection of the statements attributed to Paisios (http://harmageddon.net/hg-files/PaterPaisios.html)
OrthoChristian.com — “Some Greeks Turn to Elder Paisios’ Prophecies on Russia-Turkey Conflict” (https://orthochristian.com/88169.html)
AthoniteTestimony.com — compilation of the nine best-known Paisios prophecies (https://athonitetestimony.com/9-prophecies-elder-paisios-the-athonite/)
nomokanon.blogspot.com — Orthodox criticism of the reading of the Constantinople prophecy (https://nomokanon.blogspot.com/2016/07/der-heilige-paisios-und-die-turkei.html)
Wikipedia — Battle of Sinop 1853 and the Russo-Turkish wars, for historical context
Every image on this page is in the public domain or released under CC0 — none carries an attribution requirement or any further licence condition. Most are nineteenth-century paintings, photochrom prints from the Library of Congress around 1890–1900, and official US Navy photographs. Author and source are nonetheless named and linked for each image. The situation map was made specifically for this page.