If we had another Three Mile Island, I don’t think the United States would turn off all its nuclear reactors. But then we won World War II partly because we were the inventors of the atomic bomb, which came before nuclear power plants.

Germany did not win World War II or World War I either, for that matter. They are still within living memory of the firebombing of Dresden and other horrors. Cities such as Nuremberg and Hamburg suffered much devastation. Nor did Munich escape. And for the capital city, Berlin, the worst fate of all was reserved —- invasion and occupation by the Russians for forty-five years before the reunification of Germany.

Maybe Germany didn’t experience any nuclear bombs, but the war made them think that such types of devastation were possible. The U.S. thought it was immune even to a terrorist attack. Look at the surprise about 9/11! No one in the U.S. really imagines a nuclear attack. Even the Cold War was more imagined than real. In all honesty, no one except Hollywood envisioned Russia invading and taking over.

So it is chilling how on Friday the upper house in Germany approved the closing of nuclear reactors by 2022 just one week after the lower house voted for it. They say it was the example of Japan in March that did it. But Germany isn’t on a major seismic fault, and it can’t experience tsunamis. It was World War II that did it.