[splat]

Border guards and passports as we conceive them didn't really exist until the 20th century. The historian Paul Fussell wrote in his book Abroad:

"[B]efore 1915 His Majesty's Government did not require a passport for departure, nor did any European state require one for admittance except the two notoriously backward and neurotic countries of Russia and the Ottoman Empire."

And it wasn't until 1945 that Americans were generally required to hold a passport to travel abroad during peacetime. [1]

[1]: http://www.archives.gov/research/passport/index.html

[JonnieCache]

Thanks, I was vaguely aware that it was around the turn of the century that these things came in.

An american in 1940 may not have needed a passport to leave, but would they have needed one to get in somewhere else? Surely the nations of europe at that time would have been suspicious of basically everyone?

[rayiner]

Maybe not passports, but border guards? Establishing the customs service was literally the fifth act of congress in 1789.