Loading ...We generally think of the death penalty, at least in the enlightened and modern West, as being reserved for our most vicious and aggressive criminals.
However, for men, and only for men, the death penalty may be invoked for simple psychological weakness.
This truth is poignantly illustrated by the tragic case of Eddie Slovik, the only United States soldier executed for desertion during World War II and, indeed, the only American soldier executed for that crime from the end of the Civil War to the present day.
According to an article called “The Sad Story of Private Eddie Slovik” by Uzal W. Ent, “Eddie Slovik was born in 1920 in a poor neighborhood of Detroit.” He had his first brush with the law in 1932 when he was 12. Ent notes that, along with some friends, Eddie was arrested because he “broke into a foundry for stealing some brass.” In his early teen years, Ent continues, “he was arrested several more times for crimes such as petty theft, breaking and entering and disturbing the peace. He was never a leader, but he was apparently a willing accomplice.” In 1937, at the age of 17, Slovik first went to jail. He had made a haul of candy, chewing gum, cigarettes and change from the drugstore at which he was employed. He was paroled in September 1938 after serving just a little less than a year behind bars. However, Eddie Slovik did not stay out of trouble for long. Ent relates, “In January 1939 he and two buddies got drunk, stole a car and accidentally wrecked it. Slovik was sentenced to 2 ½ to seven years in prison but was paroled again, this time in April 1942.”
Then Eddie enjoyed what might have been the luckiest break in what he accurately called his most “unlucky” life. Writing for The Detroit News, Zena Simmons states, “After his parole from reform school in 1942, he went to work at Montella Plumbing Co. in Dearborn [Michigan] where he met Antoinette Wisniewski.” The pair were immediately attracted to each other. That attraction soon deepened. Uzal writes that the couple was “married Nov. 7, 1942” and enjoyed a “three-day celebration that featured an overworked bar and 200 guests dancing to ‘The Beer Barrel Polka.’”
Ent writes that Slovik “needed a strong person to help and guide him. To those who knew the couple, it seemed that person was Antoinette.” This is a point to give one pause. Traditionalists often emphasize the need for male headship and leadership, particularly within the family. However, the truth is that the psychological differences between the two sexes are not nearly so pronounced as the physical ones. There are many weak-willed men and strong-willed women; many shy men and outgoing women; and many insecure men and confident women. Regardless of what people may believe in theory, the dominant partner in a heterosexual relationship will often be the woman in reality. In at least some marriages, the couple will not get anywhere unless the wife leads. Eddie and Antoinette Slovik appear to have been an example of this type of couple and Eddie, who often called his wife “mommy,” seems to have been quite happy with her at the helm.
A DeSoto plant hired Eddie. The raise in pay led the couple, who had been living with Antoinette’s parents, to move into their own duplex. Simmons writes that they were “happy and secure” for about a year.
Then what would prove to be disaster struck. As was typical for convicts, Eddie had been classified 4F. He and Antoinette had assumed he was safe from the ravages of World War II. However, that conflict was getting hotter and bloodier and the need for able-bodied men to fight it grew acutely intense. The U.S. military had to have replacements for the multitude of men slaughtered and lowered its standards to get them. Along with the draft classifications of many other men with prison records, Eddie’s was changed from 4F to 1A.
Eddie and Antoinette had just recently celebrated their first anniversary when Eddie received his draft notice in January 1944.
The timid and bone-thin Eddie did not take well to military life. In basic training and afterward he spent much of his free time writing letters to his wife. Simmons reports, “During his 372 days in the Army, he wrote 378 letters.” In them he repeatedly tells Antoinette how intensely he misses her and how “Army life don’t agree with me.”
According to “Eddie Slovik Court-Martial,” Eddie was one of a group of 12 soldiers in a truck who were fresh out of basic training and who “neared the city of Elbeuf, some 80 miles northwest of Paris” and “passed miles of bloody and charred remains of men, horses, guns, trucks, and tanks left behind by fleeing Germans.” They expected to join the G Company of the 109th Infantry, 28th Division. The writer continues that since World War I that division has been known “as the Keystone or ‘Bloody Bucket’ division.”
The twelve troops dug in for the night and soon found themselves in the midst of shellfire. However, by morning ten of the men had moved out. Eddie Slovik and another private were still in their foxholes.
The two lost privates found a Canadian unit close by and joined up with it. Here Eddie made a big hit. As “Eddie Slovik Court-Marital” notes, he was “an outstanding forager” and the men relished his “delicious potato pancakes.”
It seems that he may have already determined that he simply could not fight as the article continues that the other private from his unit “noticed that Slovik quit carrying ammunition in his cartridge belt. Instead, he wadded pieces of paper, collected from the Red Cross, on which he almost constantly wrote letters to his wife in Detroit.”
On October 7, the two American privates reached a U.S. headquarters and from there were sent to Company G.
Eddie immediately requested an audience with his company commander. According to “Eddie Slovik Court-Martial,” the private said he was “too scared, too nervous” to serve in a rifle company and requested assignment to a rear area. The request was refused. Eddie was assigned to a platoon. He reported there and returned to the captain to ask a question: “If I leave now, will it be desertion?” The captain replied in the affirmative.
Eddie took off.
The next morning, he handed a slip of paper to a cook. On that paper, Eddie had written a confession to the crime of desertion. The cook turned the confession over to a lieutenant colonel. It began, “I Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik . . . confess to the Desertion of the United States Army” and described Eddie’s experience of combat, “They were shelling the town and we were told to dig in for the night. The following morning . . . I was so scared nerves and trembling that at the time the other Replacements moved out I couldn’t move. I staying in my foxhole till it was quiet . . . I told my commanding officer my story. I said that if I had to go out there again I’d run away. He said their [sic] was nothing he could do for me so I ran away again AND I’LL RUN AWAY AGAIN IF I HAVE TO GO OUT THERE.”
The lieutenant colonel offered to allow Eddie to destroy the confession and Eddie refused. Then, at the officer’s suggestion, Eddie added on the back that the confession “can be held against me and that I made it of my own free will and that I do not have to make it.”
Eddie was imprisoned in the stockade. The division judge advocate offered Slovik a deal. If Eddie would just go back to his unit and take his place as a soldier, the judge advocate would ask the General not to act on the court martial. Indeed, the judge advocate would even try to get Eddie a transfer so a unit in which no one could know of his history of desertion.
The private would have nothing to do with it. “I’ll take my court martial,” Eddie said.
A court martial took place. Eddie pled “not guilty” to the charge of desertion to avoid hazardous duty but it was obvious that he had indeed deserted and he remained silent, offering no real defense.
He was found guilty. The military jury fixed the punishment at death. Ent wrote, “the court voted by secret ballot three different times. The sentence of death was voted unanimously each time.” Ent added that Slovik’s criminal record could not have influenced the jury as it possessed no information about it.
The decision had to be approved by the division commander. For that officer, Eddie’s criminal record was an influence as he had the FBI check disclosing it before him when he received the case for review and he cited it as a reason for refusing clemency.
Eddie, who had written so many letters to his beloved Antoinette, made a last ditch attempt to save his life with a letter to the U.S. Supreme Commander in the European Theater, General Dwight David Eisenhower, in which Eddie pled for clemency.
However, General Eisenhower faced several problems that, in his judgment, mitigated against sparing the private’s life. Desertion was becoming a serious problem for the Allies in this bloody and brutal conflict. The request for clemency reached the General as one of the most savage and decisive campaigns in Europe was being waged, the Battle of the Bulge. General Eisenhower denied clemency.
How did members of the firing squad react to killing one of their own – not for aggressive crimes but for being unable to function in fear as a combat soldier must? Ent quotes one saying, “I got no sympathy for the sonofabitch! He deserted us, didn’t he? He didn’t give a damn how many of us got the hell shot out of us, why should we care for him?” Ent quoted another remarking, “I personally figured that Slovik was a no-good, and that what he had done was as bad as murder.”
Simmons tells of a member of the firing squad who said to the condemned man, “Try to take it easy, Eddie. Try to make it easy on yourself – and on us.”
Eddie replied, “Don’t worry about me. I’m OK. They’re not shooting me for deserting the United States Army – thousands of guys have done that. They’re shooting me for bread I stole when I was 12 years old.”
An odd irony of this sad case is that Eddie Slovik, a man too disabled by fear to return to combat, faced certain death with surprising courage. All accounts describe him as relatively composed before the firing squad.
After Eddie was executed, he was buried in a cemetery with 94 other American soldiers who had been executed by their own military. Unlike Private Slovik, who was killed for weakness, they had all been executed for violent crimes of either rape and/or murder.
Antoinette did not receive a GI Insurance death benefit because Eddie had died under dishonorable circumstances although she did not learn that he had been executed until 1953.
She waged an unsuccessful and, in this writer’s opinion, rather pointless campaign to have her husband granted a posthumous pardon. It seems pointless because he was unquestionably guilty of desertion and while it may have been a gross miscarriage of justice for him to be executed for the offense, there was no way to undo his death. A posthumous pardon makes sense to me only in a case where guilt of the offense is in doubt so the deceased’s good name may be restored.
After Antoinette’s death, a Polish-American WWII veteran named Bernard V. Calka, took up her cause. According to Simmons, Calka “spent about $8,000 of his own money to have Slovik’s remains returned to Michigan in 1987.” Now Eddie is buried next to the wife he so dearly loved and who so dearly loved him.
There is an online website called Find A Grave at which the final resting places of many people, whether famous or obscure, are given. For most, there is a “Virtual Flowers” section in which viewers may leave little tributes, hopes, or kind wishes for the deceased. That section has been closed in the case of Private Eddie Slovik because, in the words posted by the website, “it was being continually misused.” Over half a century after Eddie Slovik’s execution, it would appear that some people still hurl insults at a man for his weakness.
Eddie Slovik was at least partially wrong about the reason he was executed. It was not just for his history of petty theft. It was because the United States military desperately needed men for the vital mission of winning against the evils of Nazism and Fascism.
If Eddie Slovik had been born Esther or Ethel or Eve or Edwina Slovik, she would have been able to live out a normal lifespan regardless of her inability to overcome her paralysis when terrified. The only American female soldiers in WWII were volunteers and even they were generally spared life threatening duty because of the “risk rule” then in place protecting women from combat.
But Eddie Slovik had been born with a penis. As a result, being disabled by fear was a crime for which he lost his life.
Works cited
Ent, Uzal W., “The Sad Story of Private Eddie Slovik,” http://www.28-110-k.org/sad_story_of_private_eddie_slovi.html.
Simmons, Zena, “The Execution of Pvt. Eddie Slovik,” The Detroit News, http://info.detnews.com/history/story/index.cfm?id=103&category=people.
“Eddie Slovik, Court-Martial,” http://law.jrank.org/pages/2984/Eddie-Slovik-Court-Martial-1944.html.
Find A Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=3134.
ebjjs said,
August 6, 2007 at 6:08 am
Denise Noe said,
Slovik was a contemptable coward who deserted his fellow soldiers in time of war. For those of you who have never served, this is the ultimate crime to those of us who did. Many, many of the soldiers then and now came from backgrounds that make Slovik's upbringing look idyllic. Sixty years passing and the retelling by a revisionist sympathetic writer (who probably never served) doesn't lesson the gravity of his offense. Isenhower was correct in ordering his execution.
(Denise) I never served. As a woman, I was not subject to the draft when I was growing up.
August 6, 2007 at 6:18 am
NHTom said,
Please do not saddle us with the burden of low expectations.
August 6, 2007 at 8:25 am
PolishKnight said,
He was open and honest about his motives. His fear and cowardice were not pretty and he wore them on his sleeve. He made himself into a posterboy for cowardice and it's no wonder that he's so reviled and hated: Many men hate what they see in him as reflected in themselves.
I would be inclined to agree with ebjjs's sentiments if Slovik was a dishonerable man who had broken his word but he was a military draftee. A slave. I disagree with the notion of a military draft except in extreme circumstances (such as a foreign invasion) and even then, such draftees should enjoy special privileges in society to make up for their unique duty which was no longer the case after the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote was passed.
Slovik then was a second class citizen who was executed for not being "brave" enough to live up to this role. We can argue that the threat of Nazism was a greater threat to freedom than the male-only foreign service draft but as we know we're still living with the consequences of Stalinism and Communism which FDR, the commander in chief at the time, sold out to at Malta!
Let's put it this way: If all the German boys who were drafted into combat were "cowards" then all this death and destruction wouldn't have happened. The miltiary draft has been misused throughout history by despots. If the military draft was universally banned, except in cases of national defense with the entitlements I mention above, then we would live in a war free world.
August 6, 2007 at 8:56 am
Virtue said,
August 6, 2007 at 11:51 am
Denise Noe said,
A thief and a coward……and you think its a bad thing he was executed……You are what you do when it counts.
(Denise) Although I oppose the death penalty, I understand the motives of Gen. Eisenhower in allowing the execution to proceed: Nazism had to be defeated. Men had to be willing to take the risks of combat in order to defeat that horrible evil.
The purpose of my essay was to point out a burden that has been placed specifically on men and not on women: the burden of having to function in the face of terror.
August 6, 2007 at 12:42 pm
Denise Noe said,
I disagree with the notion of a military draft except in extreme circumstances (such as a foreign invasion) and even then, such draftees should enjoy special privileges in society to make up for their unique duty which was no longer the case after the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote was passed.
(Denise) World War II was a very "extreme circumstance."
Veterans enjoy "special privileges": the G.I. Bill and veteran's preferences.
August 6, 2007 at 12:44 pm
MMX said,
Fair enough. But why point it out in the first place? And how does your article accomplish the purpose of pointing it out?
August 6, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Denise Noe said,
Denise - "The purpose of my essay was to point out a burden that has been placed specifically on men and not on women: the burden of having to function in the face of terror."
Fair enough. But why point it out in the first place?
(Denise) To counteract the common but false perception that "it's a man's world" by showing how men often bear greater burdens than women.
MMX: And how does your article accomplish the purpose of pointing it out?
(Denise) As I noted, a woman with a similar personality structure — a woman too panicky to function in the face of terror — would not have been executed for her psychological weakness. But Eddie Slovik was executed for his psychological weakness.
August 6, 2007 at 1:12 pm
ebjjs said,
August 6, 2007 at 5:50 pm
steven deluca said,
Thanks for writing this article. I see people like ebjjs telling others "you can't know unless you have been there" Such bullshit. Sometimes I see cops or fireman lined up by the hundreds to honor a dead cop or fireman. I often wonder about such displays whether it's really for the man dead or a way of showing the world, hey, we are big tough men protecting others and look at us honoring one of our own. Or, maybe it's just a way to deal with the fear of dying on the job and wondering if it will matter. if they died. Maybe a way of dealing with the fear of their own possible death is lessened when they see the honor given.
You don't see garbage men lining up when "one of their own" goes down. It's not as romantic, it's not as sexy, but it's garbage men who are much more likely to be killed when compared to cops and firemen.
MOST men in battle are in the rear with the gear and some of those are the worst offenders putting flags and decals all over their cars to show they served in "The Nam" . The truth is that their are many people who have faced violence, or protected others - who have faced danger … even the fisherman in Alaska are more aware of facig death then the guys in the rear with the gear… there are people who simply have more insight who are more likely to understand the fear that can make a person panic. Some people were very brave in war many times often panicke a time or two. From what I saw in the military, some men really should never have been sent. None of us knows the childhood of others or how it affects them under stress as adults. I believe he literally was unable to move and couldn't will himself to be strong or move.
There are men who don't get PTSD simply because they are too dull or unimaginative to consider the risks they face or the harm they have done. "Ya, I killed some gooks- so whatever" They might handle war well but I would rather have as friends a man who was unable to function because he had too much going on, a moral issue… or who was simply afraid.
I have sat with many veterans, different wars, some wounded in body, some in body and mind. It's too simple and way to macho to say "He was a blood coward, so off with his head." Sounds like someone trying to enhance his own self esteem more than thoughtfulness. The bravest men i have met would not suggest killing this man.
AS a veteran with a 100 percent disability from violent miilitary duty (not war) who has known heroes and whores (guys who talk big and hide when no one is looking) in the military I know that some women have what it takes and some men don't, to "do' war. A man isn't less human than another male who has whatever it takes to stand tough. I have seen too many tough talking guys piss their pants when they were really tested and I don't trust those who try to get street creed by talking tough about the death of another.
His wife and family suffered and nothing was gained by killing this one man.
Steve DeLuca
August 6, 2007 at 10:07 pm
steven deluca said,
August 6, 2007 at 10:11 pm
amfortas said,
I agree with SD. It is in the testing that men prove themselves and it is all to easy to give in to the anger and revulsion of a coward in one's presence. But not every man is cut out to be a hero. Not every man gets beyond 12. Heroes are defined not only by their actions but by comparison to the ordinary and the weak.
Shooting a man because he is too afraid of fighting is, as you say, punishing weakness. God help us all. Had a deserter sabotaged or activley hindered effort, I can see a 'crime' fit for some punishment - short of killing probably, unless the act caused other to die.
Even Generals show weakness. Their's is a more cognitive role rather than a grunt one, exposed to the horrors of immanent death, and the fact that Generals have risen through such exposure and experience places an additional burden of understanding upon them. The description you give, Denise, of the more junior officers' understanding exposes the weakness of the Generals and gives sharp relief.
I have been a combat troop. I know who I would prefer in a foxhole with me and a coward would not fit the bill. But I would be a long way from punishing him so severely when there are behind the lines jobs needing the less courage-endowed.
In this particular case, Eddie seemed to seek escape and caused much of his own demise. His exortations against himself show a fundemental weakness of maturity. It wasn't the stealing of bread at an early age, he didn't get beyond 12. The Army executed a small boy sent to do a man's job.
August 7, 2007 at 12:09 am
ebjjs said,
August 7, 2007 at 5:57 am
Virtue said,
You succeeded with that purpose then …..but I don't care whats between your legs cowardice in the face of disaster…..You are what you do when it counts.
August 7, 2007 at 10:21 am
rastus said,
Indeed. To call a coward a coward is just good sense. It allows us to choose with whom we will associate, and upon whom we will entrust our lives. When faced with danger, we have a natural right to decide whom to trust.
But what kind of society have we created if we execute people merely for failing to live up to our expectations, especially if he has openly declared his inability to do so?
August 7, 2007 at 10:58 am
anti armchair generals said,
"Sometimes I see cops or fireman lined up by the hundreds to honor a dead cop or fireman. I often wonder about such displays whether it's really for the man dead or a way of showing the world, hey, we are big tough men protecting others and look at us honoring one of our own. "
Sometimes I have also wondered the difference between the death of "thin blue line' that protecs within the country and soldiers who die overseas. Occasionally soldier's funeral is on TV or paper, but when a member of the thin blue line dies in line of duty, the Interstate Higways are closed from services to cemetery and comrades around the country come honor the fallen.
But the difference is soldiers are in duty 24/7 and Walter Reed Hospital scandal revealed how they are healed and treated. The others get to go home at night (unless they work nightshift) and quite generous benefits. Soldiers get a folded flag and widows and children are left struggling.
August 7, 2007 at 12:54 pm
anti armchair generals said,
When a Marine came back he was a changed man and his wife divorced him. Now she is married to her highschool sweetheart.
But now the Marine has changed and wants her back and the wife is torn between two men,
Earlier there were reorts of murder- suicides of returning soldiers from Iraq and military was directed to start help program.
Similar situations happened after the Vietnam War when men were haunted by nightmares
August 7, 2007 at 1:24 pm
PolishKnight said,
"(Denise) World War II was a very "extreme circumstance."
War generally is. WWII wasn't the same as a defending against a foreign invasion. FDR clearly provoked Japan into war. More on "special circumstances" in a minute…
"Veterans enjoy "special privileges": the G.I. Bill and veteran's preferences."
So veterans enjoy "veteran's preferences" that women get simply by being born women… The GI Bill hardly makes up for forcing someone into combat.
Carrots, Denise. Where's the beef? If "special circumstances" warrants forcing someone to die in combat, then it should be sufficient enough to give them the exclusive right to vote.
Male life is "special" enough to throw enough, but not special enough to recognize beyond a few bucks for school…
August 7, 2007 at 6:43 pm
PolishKnight said,
In answer to your question, the privilege should be for all those who were fully eligible to serve in combat.
I don't view Slovak as a hero of conscience by any means but certainly the products of our male-only draft system without full recognition (exclusive voting rights) has produced Obamas and Clintons. If Slavak and his buddies had all fled and maybe the Germans were at FDR and Eleanors door, maybe they would have rethought their liberal goodies-for-women ideas, yes?
August 7, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Denise Noe said,
PolishKnight: So veterans enjoy "veteran's preferences" that women get simply by being born women…
(Denise) Veteran's preferences are preferences given specifically to veterans that give them an edge in being considered for jobs. They're an attempt to compensate veterans for the time spent out of the civilian labor market as well as their service to their country.
PolishKnight: The GI Bill hardly makes up for forcing someone into combat.
(Denise) No, it doesn't. But nothing can which is part of the point of my essay. However, many men (and a smattering of women like Nellie Gray, President of the anti-abortion group March for Life) went to college under the GI Bill who wouldn't have been able to attend college without it. They also often got into much higher paying occupations than they would have been able to enter without the GI Bill. It did a great deal of good for many of the (mostly) men who received it and made use of it.
PolishKnight: Carrots, Denise. Where's the beef? If "special circumstances" warrants forcing someone to die in combat, then it should be sufficient enough to give them the exclusive right to vote.
(Denise) I believe in democracy and democracy to me means a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." Voting is not a privilege in a democracy but a right of adult citizens so we can have a voice in how our government is run. That right may be forfeited and Slovik's right to vote may well have been taken away because of his criminal record. Even when there were severe restrictions on voting, such as being reserved only for men who owned a certain amount of property, it was not dependent on their having been in combat. Disabled men who could not have served in the military were allowed to vote.As a mature citizen of my country, I believe I should have a voice in it for it to be considered a true democracy.
PolishKnight: Male life is "special" enough to throw enough, but not special enough to recognize beyond a few bucks for school…
(Denise) It wasn't a "few bucks" but a massive program that enabled many to attend college and vastly better their lives.
I talked to one of my brothers, a social conservative, about the women's voting issue and he believes "that was settled many years ago." It does seem like this entire discussion is something of an attempt to reinvent the wheel or an attempt to somehow go from the 21st Century to the 19th Century.
August 8, 2007 at 2:53 am