Germans particularly have a lot of good reason to dislike nuclear weapons. If the Soviet Union had ever sent tanks through the Fulda Gap, NATO would have dropped a lot of tactical nukes on Germany to stop it. They had plans for it all drawn up, weapon systems invented specifically for this, etc. NATO and the Soviets were both planning to actually continue fighting through a nuclear war. Those in power viewed a nuclear WW3 as a salvageable situation from which one side might emerge victorious, not the utter end of the world. Germans who called the planned nuclear battlefield their home obviously weren't enamored with this idea.

But I think Cold War era anti-nuclear activists exploited this rational fear of nuclear weapons to vilify nuclear power as well, to weaken the capitalist West which they almost universally opposed.