Is (or was) the exclamation "Nuts!" crude?

During the Battle of the Bulge, when asked to surrender, US General McAuliffe answered with the single word "Nuts!"

I know that "nuts" can be a crude way to refer to testicles ("He got hit in the nuts by the baseball") but I've always thought of the exclamation ("Aw, nuts!") as anodyne. Would a kid saying it in the 1940s have had his mouth washed out with soap?

According to EtymOnline, by the 1950s "nuts" was taboo (or on its way):

Connection with the slang "testicle" sense has tended to nudge it toward taboo. "On the N.B.C. network, it is forbidden to call any character a nut; you have to call him a screwball." ["New Yorker," Dec. 23, 1950] "Please eliminate the expression 'nuts to you' from Egbert's speech." [Request from the Hays Office regarding the script of "The Bank Dick," 1940] This desire for avoidance accounts for the euphemism nerts (c.1925).

By the 1940s, "nuts" was on its way out. In its place, the euphemism nerts was apparently created.