I'm not sure this is of great interest to HN overall, but as perspective to those who weren't in Europe in the 1980s: This is interesting to the Dutch in parti

I'm not sure this is of great interest to HN overall, but as perspective to those who weren't in Europe in the 1980s: This is interesting to the Dutch in particular, because the political decision to accept or reject (American) cruise missiles with nuclear warheads on Dutch territory was highly, highly controversial in the mid-1980s. There was a substantial division in the population on the topic, and it was the subject of some of the largest public protests seen in the country. We learned in the past few years that nuclear weapons were allowed to be stored anyway, and now we learn that the prime minister of the era knew that all this civic debate was in fact moot, as he had been aware for 20 years that there were already nuclear weapons in place. That's interesting to me and I think it leaves room for reflection and debate about the functioning of a democracy.