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40 Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Khalid Elhassan February 14, 2020 34 min

Albrecht Gessler - William Tell — William Tell. Learn Swiss-German

31. Choosing the Worst Possible Moment

Eddie Slovik’s sentence. United States National Archives

Unfortunately for Private Slovik, he picked the worst possible moment to get cute with the Army. In the fall of 1944, Allied casualties in France were soaring, morale was at an all time low, and desertions were at an all time high. To restore order and discipline, the authorities needed to make an example of somebody. Along came Slovik: a jailbird openly defying the US military and daring it to do its worst. So it did.

Slovik was charged with desertion to avoid hazardous duty, and got his day in court on November 11^th, 1944. His confession was presented to the military tribunal, and he chose not to testify. Slovik was not surprised when he was convicted – it was what he had counted on. He was unpleasantly surprised, however, when the court sentenced him not to the relative safety and comfort of prison, as he had hoped, but to death.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.