There’s absolutely no evidence that McAuliffe said anything other than “Nuts!”
Jon Lighter, in his Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, traces the use of nuts as a slang interjection to at least 1910, and offers as a synonym Balls!. It was considered vulgar before the early 1900’s. It could be used “to express disgust, disbelief, rejection, anger, etc.”
As an aside, I used to know a woman who often used the term, “bunny nuts” as an epithet. 
Like I said on the other thread: My Dad was a WWII vet. He had mentioned that Officers- especially West Point officers, were expected to be gentlemen, and that sometimes you could tell a “West Pointer” from a “brought up from the ranks” officer (besides the Ring!) was the fact that the West Pointer would often not use profanity.
Sure Patton did use profanity,and lots of it- but he was notable for doing so. If it had been common for Officers to use profanity, then Patton’s profanity wouldn’t have been so notable.
Gen McAuliffe was a West-pointer.
Thus, “Nuts!” was certainly possible. It doesn’t seem to have been bowlderized.
Slightky off-topic, may I perhaps introduce you American posters to a British version.
In 1944, as part of the ludicrous Operation Market Garden, the Arnhem battle, a division of lightly armed British paratroopers was dropped thirty miles behind enemy lines. Immediately surrounded by Field Marshal Model’s Panzerarmee they were pounded for days in an ever-shrinking enclave until the Germans offered a truce. Their emissary, an Wehrmacht SS officer in full dress officer marched into the house where the wearied paras had their headquarters;
‘I have come’, he said generously, ‘to discuss the terms of surrender’.
‘I am sorry’, said General Frost’, ‘but we simply don’t have the facilities to take so many of you prisoner. Goodbye’.
Not quite as direct and terse as ‘nuts’ but it has its own style.
Sorry, but I have to add this.
After Waterloo, the Marquis de Cambronne (as I think he was) became a hero to the Napoleonic revanchists - part of the larger legend of the Emperor.
However the French royalists did a little digging into the good Marquis and the story of his blase courage. They found - so they alleged - that Camrbonne was not actually even at Waterloo. His company had been caught by some Prussians a little before at Quatre-Bras and he had surrendered to them. He was not present at the climactic battle.
The press celebrated this exposure with a cartoon of Cambronne surrendering to the Prussian foe above the wicked but rather witty byline:
‘The Guard Surrenders But It Does Not Die’.
In my Classics illustrated Special Issue; World war II (which taught me more about that conflict than I ever learned in high school), they tell the story with “Nuts”, which was a pretty commen expletive back then. (And it’s hard for me to believe it was considered “pretty strong” back then. The Cowardly Lion says it in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz, fer cryin’ out loud!)
The comic showed mcAulife sending the message “Nuts”. In the next panel, the Germans are puzzling over it. “What does it mean, ‘Nuts’?” “In plain English, it means the same as ‘Go to Hell’”
pretty strong stuff for a 1960s comic for kids!
Your comic got the exchange pretty accurately, actually, between the German and American emissaries. That was how the meaning was explained to them.
An interesting previous thread on the subject. slipster, unfortunately no longer with us, says he actually spoke with someone who was there.
My dad and several uncles were WWII vets. “Nuts” was definatly in thier vernacular, and did not refer to testes. Since I was raised around several men who came of age in that era, it always seemed to me to be exactly the word I would have expected.
Specific times I can recall my dad uttering “Nuts!”
-Axle on my uncle’s Scout broke while launching boat.
-Noticing the fact that drain plug was not reinstalled prior to lauching said boat.
-Discovery that large rock had punctured car’s gas tank.
-Discovery that hired mechanic had installed thrust bearing on wrong crankshaft jurnal when rebuilding engine.
-Discovery that roots had plugged sewer line causing basement to flood with sewage.
Eh, I’ll go ahead and post it here:
Not definitive, I suppose, but interesting. I could see where an officer of the era wouldn’t exactly want to be famous for an obscenity.
Those would be Peanuts comics.
That was **Colonel ** John Frost, played in *A Bridge Too Far * by Anthony Hopkins.
I have no cite for this, but I recall hearing that General McAuliffe’s wife once spoke about the incident. She was stateside when the tale started coming through the grapevine. The name of the commander who had sent the defiant message to the Germans was not common knowledge, but Mrs. McAuliffe knew instantly that it was her husband. Because “aw, nuts” was his default statement of frustration.