“This was interpreted by German officers as a more colorful-and negative-response to their demand. Anthony McAuliffe: ‘Nuts!’” the Bloodiest Battle states. “When the Germans sent a message demanding the surrender of the 101st on December 22, they got a one-word response from its commander, Brig. Eisenhower, in response, sent in more units, including the famed 101st Airborne Division. In the small, pivotal Belgian town of Bastogne, the Germans surrounded thousands of Allied troops. The Germans also changed road signs and spread misinformation.ġ01st Airborne Division Arrive in Bastogne “We got word that the Germans had dropped a lot of paratroopers behind our lines, and that they were dressed like American Soldiers and spoke English,” he said. Veteran Vernon Brantley, a private first class in the 289th Regiment, told the Fort Jackson Leader in 2009 that his unit had just arrived in Germany from France when they were told to load up and return to Luxembourg. “But I didn’t really know cold until the Battle of the Bulge.” Nazis Sent in Imposters and Changed Road SignsĪnother Nazi strategy was to attempt to infiltrate the Allied troops. “I was from Buffalo, I thought I knew cold,” baseball Hall of Famer and WWII veteran Warren Spahn said in The Love of Baseball. More than 15,000 “cold injuries”-trench foot, pneumonia, frostbite-were reported that winter. Hitler’s mid-December timing of the attack-one of the bloodiest of the war-was strategic, as freezing rain, thick fog, deep snow drifts and record-breaking low temperatures brutalized the American troops.
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