The Execution of Private Slovik

Topic: Libertarianism
The Execution of Eddie Slovik

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A private dies because of the generals' fears
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by Random Outlier
(Libertarian)
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Sixty-three years ago today formal charges were filed against Private Eddie D. Slovik of Detroit, Michigan.

One hundred seven days later he died in the snow-clogged courtyard of a story-book villa near St. Mary aux Mines in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France.

Mark that date. January 31 commemorates the state's ultimate power to kill you for something you didn't do.

By every account Private Slovik died calmly and bravely at the hands of his comrades, twelve other 28th Infantry Division privates of the cannon-fodder class. Find whatever irony you will in his stoic demise for the offense of cowardice, specifically desertion in the face of the enemy.

The Slovik saga was first and best told to the world by William Bradford Huey, although the execution "by musketry" of the sad young loser was a semi-public display.

Chair-warming brass and combat veterans from the 28th's ranks watched Slovik slump as the eleven .30-06 rounds tore into his body -- less to punish him for a not-uncommon crime in 1945 than "pour encourager les autres."

The point having been made where it counted and the relevant others presumably encouraged, the public relations might of the government of the United States of America united in "ssshhhhh."

It would be impolitic to let the folks back home, including Mrs. Slovik, learn that an American soldier was killed as a coward and, moreso, for the home front to be given enough information to wonder why the example was needed.

It took Huie eight years to assemble the story.

It is a libertarian must-read, a piece of interesting history and an objective commentary on the ultimate relationship between a man and his community. It is a warning of what can go wrong when high powers discover their own errors.

Objective? Even the military PR machine at last thought it was. When movie makers began asking for Pentagon cooperation in making a film of the book, defense officials said yes, but only if they promised the film would be as even-handed as the book.

Huie himself assigns no malign intent to the generals who killed the private, but he gives us something even more frightening -- an operational necessity for "the system."

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Why kill a pathetic 25-year-old former juvenile delinquent who couldn't even make a go of petty crime -- whose most serious civilian offense was embezzlement of $59 worth of candy and gum from his employer? Whose letters to his wife -- three and four a day -- began "Dear Mommy" and were simply protracted whines?

It has a little something to do with errors in high places.

In the American land war in Europe 1944-45 some 40,000 G.I.s deserted. Forty-nine cases were serious enough to earn a "death by musketry" court-martial sentence. Exactly one resulted in execution, making Slovik the only American military man executed by official order since 1864.

And in his coda to the depressing tale, Huie writes, "...it would be difficult to challenge a prediction that Private Eddie Slovik will be the only American put to death for avoidance of duty between 1864 and the year, somewhere in the future, where the United States cease to be free."

"When," he writes. Not "if."

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Slovik died because our leaders were afraid. After the Normandy victory in the summer of 1944 there was a tacit promise by national politicians that Europe was won, that a quick slash into Germany would topple Hitler's Nazis and shower glory on American arms in time for Christmas if not Thanksgiving.

It didn't work out that way, and the campaign settled into a dreary, bloody, semi-static slugfest in the mud that drains the will of the rifle-company grunt.

Desertions, malingering, combat fatigue soared, and division brass became aghast at the number of empty foxholes. And even after Hitler fell, Tojo remained to be beaten at a projected blood price one million American casualties.

We needed more cannon fodder, and back in America the barrel-scraping began. "Don't test their eyes; count 'em."

Eddie Slovak, the semi-cripple and ex-con who seemed to be re-ordering his life, had married another semi-cripple after being assured he was 4-F now and forever.

A year or so later, the generals and politicians changed their minds, and by late 1944 Slovik was in uniform and shipped off to war in Europe. Like thousands of others he entered combat through a replacement depot --- the repple depple system even the generals conceded cruel and dangerous in sending frightened, half-trained young men off to fight alongside strangers.

At his first taste of hostile fire he froze, then ran. He turned himself in, confessed to desertion, and refused a deal to return to duty in lieu of a general court martial. He preferred the warm safety and three squares of the stockade to the terror of the lines. Eventually, he assumed, he would go free.

He was convicted and sentenced to death -- a sentence almost no one believed would actually occur. It would be reduced to imprisonment somewhere up the chain of command, just like all the others. But it wasn't.

His division commander, Major General Howard. D. Cota, approved death "by musketry." So did General Dwight D. Eisenhower, clearing the way for MPs to haul the private back to his regiment to face his dozen comrades who, however reluctant they might have been, were "only following orders."

The firing squad lined up 20 yards from the post where Eddie was tied. On command they unlocked and raised their M1 Garand rifles, a weapon firing ammunition lethal and precisely accurate out to hundreds of yards.

The volley was precisely timed but badly aimed, and for a few moments it appeared a second salvo might be needed. But Private Eddie Slovik obligingly bled out, saving military face along with the price of eleven rounds of .30-06 ball ammunition and one blank.

The high officers returned to their desks and death detail to their units, not pleased but generally secure in their belief that they had acted as faithful executors of the will of the People of the United States of American -- their community.

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Even the most anarchistic libertarian concedes the need for community of one sort or another, to create it, to police it, to defend it. But he will argue that cooperation best results from a community-wide gentlemen's agreement to act rationally, to err always on the side of the individual while limiting coercion to the most crucial matters of community survival.

We killed Eddy Slovik because our generals feared his cowardice threatened our survival.

In hindsight, we rather wish we hadn't done it, in part because of Slovik himself, an amiable loser throughout his life, a person no one really disliked, and the last man in the world one might consider a crucial threat to the American community, regardless of what he did or did not do.

And because hindsight also makes it doubtful that his execution shortened our war by one minute, reduced its casualties by so much as a single case of trenchfoot.

We killed the private because we could, and because we were afraid. We killed him to symbolize community supremacy over individual human life in an historic moment when we were afraid.

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How frightened we are in this tortured decade of a new century which appears to be ushering in a fresh round of social and economic entrophy?

Afraid enough to kill those who will not board a socialist bandwagon to "revise the world economic system?" Or to execute he who voices critical questions about military adventurism under the banner of anti-terrorism?

Probably not, at least not yet, but a freedom proponent who refuses to keep the Slovik example in mind is something less than a complete libertarian.

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Huie, William Bradford, "The Execution of Private Slovik." New York, 1954, Delacorte Press.
The Execution of Private Slovik seems appropriate timing

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