154 e lusive v ictories
eagerly about returning to civilian life as soon as their year of training
was complete. Th eir attitude was captured by the slang term “OHIO”—
over the hill in October, the month the conscription law would expire.
Barely more than half the public backed extending the draft law, and a
clear majority wished to continue the restriction that conscripts could
serve only in the Western Hemisphere. Again General Marshall put his
infl uence on the line to sway lawmakers to continue the draft. After a
fi erce battle in the House of Representatives, the bill to reauthorize
conscription and extend the term of service passed by a single vote,
with the geographic restriction still in force. Th is despite a declaration
by the president of an unlimited state of national emergency amid
rising tensions with both Germany and Japan. Polls taken in November
1941 made evident just how little progress the president and his admin-
istration had made in their eff ort to sway the public toward American
intervention. Although most Americans favored aid to the Allies, only
one in three would vote for war. Indeed, the American people were no
more willing to enter the war at the beginning of December 1941 than
they had been after the French surrender in June 1940.
Did the slow American mobilization for war matter? A harsh critic
of Roosevelt’s direction of prewar policy, Stephen Ambrose poses the
most provocative “what if.” Had the United States mobilized early for
war, he avers, “the Axis almost surely would have been deterred.” P o s -
sibly so, though that would have been the case only if the country were
fully armed by 1939, which in turn would have required remarkable
prescience on Roosevelt’s part—the buildup would have had to com-
mence several years before Munich.
It seems more reasonable to suggest that serious American prepara-
tions should have started when Germany attacked Poland. Even that
would have done little to alter the disastrous results in the months
immediately following Pearl Harbor. At root, early American defeats
stemmed from the mental habits of peace: on December 7, 1941,
modern battleships would have been just as unready to defend them-
selves against the surprise Japanese attack, while more B-17s in the Phil-
ippines simply would have meant more of them caught on the ground.
On the other hand, belated mobilization slowed the American counter-
off ensive in all theaters. An invasion of Northwest Europe in 1943 might
have ended the war a year sooner—saving millions of lives, including