The Germans, going into WWII, did not. The term was coined later, and the devices it's meant nowadays to imply were developed later. This is, of course, an accident of history and I wasn't making a deep point, just having some fun, but I do think you missed my point which was that threats of a mushroom cloud in particular would be a difference not a similarity between the two situations.
"Mushroom cloud" to me basically means "we don't have time to think, because then it will be too late!". In that sense, there is exactly zero difference between Goebbels, Bush and Obama. They just outwardly behave less like total pigs in ascending order, but the rationale is the same. "Finance us, and finance us murdering you and people all over the world, or it will be EVEN WORSE."
The daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador pretending she's a nurse and that Saddams's soldiers are throwing newborns on the floor just because they can, Powell with his slides telling the UN some trailers could be weapons laboratories, and that Saddam must be attacked immediately, it's all the same to me... it's not really about nuclear weapons, whatever works is used.
