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.â€Â
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.’â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.â€Â
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.
