Plenty of people on both sides really wanted to use them. Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kissinger, being one of them. Fortunately, cooler heads held the launch codes and we all prevailed.
This and a few others. Going through the wired archives you'll find many examples of nuclear false alarms and brinkmanship where the only thing stopping annihilation is an officer ignoring or delaying the order to launch [1][2].
I think a lot of people on both sides were prepared to use them. Fortunately only a very small number of people wanted to use them and were in any position to actually do so.
