A number of writers are arguing that America’s borders should be completely open. Free access to all! It’s the very nature of freedom.

How could a tyrant like Adolf Hitler have used open borders to his political advantage? Remember, given the premise of those who don’t want any borders or restrictions, anybody and everybody would have free access to America, including its political system of free elections.

Let’s take a look at some “alternative history” as a way of putting such a radical idea to the test.

Historical “what ifs” abound. What if Adolf Hitler had been afflicted with the family name Schicklgruber? For the first thirty-nine years of Adolf Hitler’s father’s life, he was known as Alois Schicklgruber.

“There are many weird twists of fate in the strange life of Adolf Hitler, but none more odd than this one which took place thirteen years before his birth. Had the eighty-four-year-old wandering miller not made his unexpected reappearance to recognize the paternity of his thirty-nine-year-old son nearly thirty years after the death of his mother, Adolf Hitler would have been born Adolf Schicklgruber. There may not be much or anything in a name, but I have heard Germans speculate whether Hitler could have become the master of Germany had he been known to the world as Schicklgruber. It has a slightly comic sound as it rolls off the tongue of a South German. Can one imagine the frenzied German masses acclaiming a Schicklgruber with their thunderous ‘Heils’? ‘Heil Schicklgruber!’? Not only was ‘Heil Hitler!’ used as a Wagnerian, pagan-like chant by the multitude in the mystic pageantry of the massive Nazi rallies, but it became the obligatory form of greeting between Germans during the Third Reich, even on the telephone, where it replaced the conventional ‘Hello.’ ‘Heil Schicklgruber!’? It is a little difficult to imagine.”1

Hitler confided to his only childhood friend, August Kubizek, “that the name Schicklgruber ‘seemed to him so uncouth, so boorish, apart from being so clumsy and unpractical. He found ‘Heidler’ . . . too soft; but ‘Hitler’ sounded rich and was easy to remember.”2

Consider for a moment an alternative history like that described in Philip K. Dick’s Nazis-in-America Hugo-Award-winning novel The Man in the High Castle (1962).3

What if America had an unrestricted border policy in 1930?

What if Adolf Hitler had decided that he would take advantage of America’s open borders policy to accomplish his dream of a thousand year Reich? No need for militarization. No lost lives. No protracted war. Genius.

He could have sent German families to Mexico by tens of thousands every month, had them cross our southern border, and obtain American citizenship (if that was even necessary). In the 1940 election, these millions of new German Americans could vote for a Nazi slate of candidates and change America from the inside — democratically.

Let’s bring the “what if” up to date.

Consider what could take place if Muslims wanted to realize their dream of a worldwide Caliphate? They could enter the United States by the tens of millions. Within a decade they could change the power structure in America without a single beheading.

The beheadings would come later for any and all that resisted.

These are some very good reasons as to why borders are important. Don’t think that the above alternative history is not possible. It’s a very real possibility.

1. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 8. Hitler is referred to as “Schicklgruber” in the film Stalag 17 and the Bugs Bunny Merrie Melodies cartoon Herr Meets Hare (1945): “He’ll have you back here faster than you can say Schicklgruber.” [↩]
2. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the third Reich, 8, note. [↩]
3. Amazon  is going to produce a film version of the novel. [↩]