Around midday on 22 December 1944 four German soldiers under white flags walked up the Arlon road toward the American lines outside Bastogne, the Belgian road junction that the 101st Airborne Division and attached armor had held since the German Ardennes offensive surrounded it. They carried a typed demand for the honorable surrender of the encircled town within two hours. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the acting division commander, answered in writing with a single word: Nuts! The reply became one of the best-known lines of the war.
A town surrounded
The German offensive in the Ardennes began on 16 December 1944. Bastogne mattered because seven roads met there, and the 101st Airborne Division was rushed in to hold it alongside armored teams already in the area. By the evening of 21 December the town was cut off. Hugh Cole's official history notes that the 327th Glider Infantry's war diary dated the encirclement to 20 December, but that the picture of complete encirclement formed in McAuliffe's headquarters only during the 21st. Bad weather stopped the planned airdrop on the 22nd, artillery ammunition was running low and there were too few medics for the many wounded, yet Cole writes that morale was high.1
The demand and the reply
At about 11.30, according to the account of the episode published by the U.S. Army, the German party, two officers and two enlisted men, approached the positions of F Company, 327th Glider Infantry, on the Arlon road from the direction of Remoifosse. The officers were blindfolded and led to the company command post. The two-page message in English and German said the town was encircled and that only its honorable surrender could save the Americans from total annihilation, and it gave two hours before German artillery would open fire.2
When the paper reached division headquarters, McAuliffe's first reaction was a scornful "Nuts!" His staff told him that his first remark would be hard to beat, and the typed reply read: "To the German Commander, N U T S! The American Commander". Colonel Joseph Harper of the 327th took it back to the waiting Germans. When they did not understand the slang, the Army's account says it was translated as "You can go to hell," and Cole writes that Harper settled on "Go to Hell!".3
The threatened bombardment did not come. The German demand had been signed only "The German Commander," and Cole notes that none of the German generals in the sector seemed anxious to claim it. The division's intelligence officer made sure the story went round the perimeter, and Cole calls it perhaps the biggest boost to morale of the siege.4
Relief
The sky cleared on 23 December. Cargo planes dropped supplies into the perimeter and fighter-bombers attacked the German ring. On 26 December, at 16.50 by the record of the 4th Armored Division, its leading tanks broke through the German ring south of the town and made contact with the defenders. Cole writes that twenty minutes later Lieutenant Colonel Creighton Abrams shook hands with McAuliffe, who had come out to the outpost line to meet them. Our full account, The Battle of the Bulge, 1944, tells the story of the whole offensive, which began on 16 December.5
