In the ninth Countdown to D-Day officer bio, Peter Margaritis presents Heinrich von Lüttwitz, an aristocratic officer who played a pivotal role in the Battle of the Bulge.
Diepold Georg Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz, born December 6, 1896, was an aristocratic Prussian Junker. Already an excellent horseman when World War I began, he immediately joined the army and became a highly decorated veteran, wounded twice. An early believer in maximizing the use of motorized units, he commanded at the start of World War II a motorcycle recon battalion in Poland. On the second day of the invasion, he was seriously wounded by a Polish sniper. In October 1942, he was given command of the 20th Panzer Division, being refitted on the Eastern Front.
Working his way up the ranks, he served in most of the Eastern campaigns. After the 2nd Panzer Division was all but destroyed in Russia, it was moved in late 1943 to France to recuperate and reform. Von Lüttwitz, now a Generalleutnant, was put in command.
His division saw heavy combat in the Normandy campaign and was It was later encircled in the Falaise pocket in August. It managed to break out, but with heavy losses. While his division reorganized in Germany, von Lüttwitz in early September succeeded Hans Freiherr von Funck as commander of the XLVII Panzer Corps and was promoted to General der Panzertruppe.
Three months later, von Lüttwitz played a pivotal (if somewhat infamous) role in the Battle of the Bulge. Still commanding the XLVII Corps (which now consisted of his own 2nd Panzer Division, Panzer Lehr, and the 26th Volksgrenadier Division), his corps was part of von Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army. In the true spirit of Blitzkrieg warfare, his mobile units initially bypassed and surrounded the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. It was none other than von Lüttwitz who drafted and sent over to the Americans the notorious surrender demand on the morning of December 22nd (“To the U.S.A. commander of the encircled town of Bastogne…”), hoping that he could bluff the Americans into surrendering.
When the ultimatum was finally read to acting division commander General Tony McAuliffe (who had been sleeping), his initial thought (erroneous, of course) was that the Germans wanted to surrender to them, a popular although quite unrealistic rumour then going around. His chief of staff quickly corrected that misconception. “Us surrender?” McAuliffe growled. “Aw, nuts.”
McAuliffe then read the surrender note himself. Then he chuckled and again said “Nuts” disgustedly. He dropped the surrender note onto the floor and walked away. (Interestingly, in a 1954 interview, McAuliffe was asked what he actually had said. McAuliffe replied, “Sh*t.” If this is true, the expletive was obviously cleaned up.)
After a moment, McAuliffe realized that some reply was needed. He thought for a minute and then told his staff, “Well, I don’t know what to tell them.” He asked them what they thought, and his G3, Col. Harry Kinnard, replied, “That first crack of yours would be hard to beat, General.”
McAuliffe looked at him and asked, “What do you mean?”
“Sir,” the officer replied, “you said ‘Nuts’.” And his staff of course enthusiastically agreed. So the general asked for a blank piece of paper and wrote as his answer:
TO THE GERMAN COMMANDER:
NUTS!
THE AMERICAN COMMANDER
And that became their official reply—a quote that galvanized the defenders in Bastogne (The standing joke that came from this became, “The poor bastards… They’ve got us surrounded.”). McAuliffe’s reply would rally the American troops along the entire front, a quote that would forever go down in the annals of U.S. military history as one of the greatest American quotes in war.
The Germans, of course, were perplexed by the reply. The major in charge of the four-man surrender party arrogantly asked, “Is the reply negative or affirmative? If it is the latter, I will negotiate further.”
Col. Harper, commanding the 327th Glider Regiment in that area, replied irritably, “The reply is decidedly not affirmative.” He paused and added, “If you continue your foolish attack, your losses will be tremendous.”
He then directed the Germans to a jeep and drove them back to where they had first been detained. The Germans still did not understand the message, though. So Harper told the interpreter (a private), “Tell them to take a flying sh*t!” The interpreter instead told the Germans, “Du kannst zum Teufel gehen” (“You can go to hell.”)
Then Harper added, “And I’ll tell you something else—if you continue to attack, we’ll kill every gawddam German that tries to break into this city.”
The German captain, hearing the interpretation and now aware of what the response meant, saluted haughtily and told Col. Harper, “We will kill many Americans. This is war.”
Harper sneered and replied, “On your way, bud.” As they left, he added, “and good luck to you.”
General Manteuffel, von Lüttwitz’s superior, later found out about the surrender envoys, too late to stop them. Furious over the empty threats that were contained in the ultimatum and the idiots the Americans had made of them, he nearly relieved von Lüttwitz right then.
Interestingly, none of the German commanders after the war would admit having sent the infamous demand. It was not until 1960 that von Lüttwitz himself in a television interview openly took claim for the message. Fritz Bayerlein in his book about the Panzer Lehr Division later confirmed this, adding that he had helped von Lüttwitz compose the message (Bayerlein was careful to state for the record that the surrender note was not his idea but rather that of von Lüttwitz himself. He was nevertheless quite disappointed with McAuliffe’s defiant answer).
On April 16, 1945, Von Lüttwitz, along with General Fritz Bayerlein and General der Infantry Erich Abraham, surrendered to the Americans. Released some two years later from prison, Von Lüttwitz retired to Neuburg in Bavaria and died there October 9, 1969.
Heinrich von Lüttwitz and his role in the defence of the Atlantic Wall is explored in the new book, Countdown to D-Day, due to be released June 2019.
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