Greenland in World War II

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War in Greenland
The crew of the German Edelweiss II weather station surrenders to the Americans, October 1944
The crew of the German Edelweiss II weather station surrenders to the Americans, October 1944
date April 9, 1940 to May 5, 1945
place Greenland
output Allied victory
Parties to the conflict

DenmarkDenmark Denmark

  • Greenland

United States 48United States United States

German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire SlovakiaSlovakia 1939Slovakia 

Commander

DenmarkDenmark Eske Brun Ib Poulsen Edward H. Smith
DenmarkDenmark
United States 48United States

German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era)Hermann Ritter Gottfried Weiss
German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era)

Troop strength
* Greenland: 15 men 1 patrol ship, 1 survey ship, at least 44 ships
DenmarkDenmark
United States 48United States		 German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era)at least 70 men 2 men (at the beginning)
Slovakia 1939Slovakia
losses

3 dead, 4 wounded, 1 destroyed police station

At least 1 dead, at least 70 prisoners, 1 captured transport ship, all weather stations destroyed

Even Greenland was during the Second World War location of military interests. The Kingdom of Denmark , apart from its colonies, had been under German occupation since April 9, 1940 during the Second World War . During this time there were expeditions and minor fighting in Greenland , but they were relatively bloodless.

Meaning of Greenland

In 1940 Greenland was a region without many inhabitants, significant military facilities or raw materials to be reached, but the strategic importance of the Danish colony as a bridge between North America and Scandinavia and as an area for weather stations should not be underestimated. In its capacity as a region for weather surveys that were used for weather forecasting in Europe , Greenland could provide significant military strategic data. The Norwegian troops in Canada , along with Germany , Denmark, Canada , the United Kingdom and the United States, were also possible adversaries in the conflict, especially since Norway had claimed Greenland until 1933.

course

Seeking help in Washington

Because the British Royal Navy prevented Axis ships from entering Greenland, the colony was left to its own devices, but the Americans also prevented the British or Canadians from occupying individual points of the country in order to maintain Greenland's neutrality. The Danish Landsfogeder of Greenland, Eske Brun and Aksel Svane , justified this neutrality with an emergency clause from 1925, which allowed Greenland to govern itself in the event of war. The Landsfogeder agreed on this with the Danish envoy in Washington, DC , Henrik Kauffmann . Kauffmann had recognized that Greenland had to act as a sovereign nation if it wanted to get US help, since, in line with the Monroe Doctrine , it only wanted to support a neutral, independent Greenland.

In March 1941, the South Greenland Survey Expedition set sail on the Cayuga from Boston to find suitable locations for weather stations, air bases and other military infrastructure. The expedition consisted of diplomats as well as army and naval officers. The members of the expedition were expressly instructed to behave respectfully towards the Greenlanders in order to counter the German propaganda that the Americans would wipe out the Greenlanders. On April 9, Henrik Kauffmann and the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull signed the Hull-Kauffmann Treaty, which allowed the United States to build military infrastructure in Greenland. The Danish government, under German control, continued to send orders to the colony, but these were ignored.

In June and July 1941, the US forces around Greenland were converted into the Greenland Patrol . The Northeast Greenland Patrol consisted of the Northland , the North Star and the USS Bear .

The armed forces step in

Universal weekly news report on the attack on a German weather station, 1944

The German Empire never seriously considered launching a major military offensive in Greenland, but saw the island essentially as an outpost for weather stations. Occasionally the Allies were able to spot German planes over Greenland and the officers of the Americans blamed German radio transmitters for some Allied plane crashes. In the spring of 1943, the Greenland sled patrol was able to observe a small group of Wehrmacht soldiers on the east coast and take one of their officers prisoner. They put the officer in US hands and thereupon 26 US commandos, three Danish guides, 40 sled dogs with a large amount of dog food on board the Northland and the North Star set out to locate the German base and to destroy. The North Star expedition led by Captain Carl C. von Paulsen achieved little and the wooden North Land was damaged in the ice, so von Paulsen went to Iceland for repairs and handed his flag over to the Northland . After a long patrol along the east coast, it was able to report that the Germans had tried to take the sled station on Sabine Ø , but American bombers had destroyed it and the Wehrmacht soldiers had been evacuated by plane. The US landing unit captured a German officer who posed as a doctor , but was mistaken for a Gestapo agent by Captain von Paulsen .

On March 23, 1943, the Germans attacked Eskimonæs on Clavering Ø . They burned down the base of the sled patrol, but they were able to flee unharmed and without provisions to the base on Ella Ø. On their way back to Sabine Island, a patrol of three men was ambushed by Wehrmacht soldiers, and Corporal Eli Knudsen was killed.

In July 1944, the Americans let soldiers from the Northland and the Storis go ashore on Shannon in order to destroy a German weather station posted there. Again the Wehrmacht soldiers were able to flee beforehand. They left behind a lot of supplies, gas drums, ammunition and the badly damaged trawler Coberg .

On September 1, 1944, after a three-hour chase, the Northland captured the eight officers and twenty soldiers of a German trawler. The Germans had sunk their trawler themselves after being too badly damaged. In the course of the capture, the most senior officer handed his sword to Northland captain RW Butcher.

In the fall of 1944, the two new wind- class icebreakers Eastwind and Southwind from the Gibbs and Cox shipyard were added to the Greenland Patrol. The reinforced Greenland Patrol was able to take control of many German soldiers and the Externsteine, who were trapped in the ice . The Externsteine was the only ship of the Kriegsmarine that the Americans could capture on the open sea. They sent it to Iceland . The Externsteine was later accepted into the United States Coast Guard . The last German weather station, Edelweiss II , was captured by USCGC Eastwind troops on October 4, 1944.

Bluies

The Americans used the code name "Bluie" for Greenland during World War II. Because the US soldiers could not pronounce the names of the Greenlandic villages correctly, they used "Bluie" as the name for the respective bases.

Aftermath

On May 5, 1945, the liberation of Denmark was celebrated in Nuuk . Landsfoged Eske Brun reassigned all units to the Copenhagen Command and Kauffmann returned to Denmark, where the ongoing trial for treason against him was discontinued and the Danish government ratified his treaty with Washington , which was replaced by a new treaty in 1951. Even if Denmark regained control of Greenland, the short period of self-government with the help of the Americans was an important step for Greenland's efforts to achieve autonomy . In 1953 Greenland was no longer a colony .

The sled patrol still exists as an elite force in the Danish Navy.

Artistic processing

The thriller The Manchurian Candidate includes a scene in which a US veteran talks about the war in Greenland. The novel The Men of the "Arluk" by the veteran Sloan Wilson processes his warlike experiences in Greenland.

Footnotes

  1. ^ At the beginning of the expeditions Slovakia was involved with two men
  2. ^ Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h The Coast Guard and the Greenland Patrol
  4. ^ Michael G. Walling: Bloodstained Sea: the US Coast Guard in the Battle of the Atlantic, 1941-1944 , International Marine / McGraw-Hill, Camden, Maine, p. 6
  5. ↑ David Howarth: The Sledge Patrol: A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Victory Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press. ISBN 978-1-59921-322-4 , 2007 (1957), p. 8
  6. ^ Howarth, p. 75
  7. ^ Wilhelm Dege, William Barr: War north of 80: the last German Arctic weather station of World War II Calgary, University of Calgary Press, 2004
  8. ↑ JC Annual Report 2011 , p. 27.
  9. ↑ Grønland ville selv afskaffe fanger cultures