This article was written and published by TjekDet.
Greenland should belong to the United States.
And from the perspective of American politicians, there are several natural reasons for this, when you look at the history between Greenland and the United States.
Recently, US congressman Andy Ogles said the following in an interview with FOX News:
“The United States of America has spilled more blood protecting Greenland than the Danes have.”
Andy Ogles is the initiator of the bill Make Greenland Great Again Act, which aims to fulfil Donald Trump’s wish to gain control over Greenland.
But Andy Ogles’ claim that the United States has suffered greater losses than Denmark is something the Danish member of parliament and Greenland spokesperson for the Conservative People’s Party, Rasmus Jarlov, strongly disagrees with.
“The United States has never spilled a single drop of blood over Greenland. Not one. Denmark very much has,” he writes on X.
But has the United States helped protect Greenland, and when – and has it cost human lives?
Dive into the history of, among other things, a torpedoed ship, a firefight on Greenland’s east coast, and hydrogen bombs together with two experts. The answer is far from being carved in Greenlandic granite.
SS Dorchester
Although Greenland has been under the Danish crown for centuries, it is not relevant to include the time before the Second World War. This is explained by Peter Harmsen, author of the book ‘Greenland at War: The Struggle for the Arctic 1939-45’.
Greenland was only marginally involved in, for example, the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War. As a result, the world’s largest island did not have a real need for military protection, according to Peter Harmsen.
During the Second World War, after Denmark’s occupation on 9 April 1940, Greenland was left in a no-man’s-land, which both the Allies and Nazi Germany had an interest in.
Related to this, the Danish envoy to the United States, Henrik Kauffmann, made an agreement with the US government that gave Americans the right to establish military bases and harbours in Greenland – bypassing the Danish government. Henrik Kauffmann justified his solo action by arguing that the Danish government was under German influence and could not act in Denmark’s interests.
Greenland was among the most important areas for the Allies’ fight against the Nazis in order to obtain reliable weather reports, which were important for, for example, planning air raids, says Søren Rud, a history researcher at the University of Copenhagen.
In January 1943, the United States sent the ship SS Dorchester, loaded with soldiers and supplies, towards Greenland. But the ship was spotted by a German submarine, which on the night of 3 February 1943 torpedoed the Dorchester west of Cape Farewell in southern Greenland. The ship sank in a short time.
There were 904 people on board, and nearly 700 of them lost their lives. The majority of those killed were Americans, but there were also a small number of Danes among them. We do not know exactly how many, but according to a memorial for the tragedy, it was “13 good Danish men”.
At first glance, Andy Ogles is therefore right in saying that Americans suffered heavy losses in Greenland. However, we do not know what congressman Andy Ogles bases his claim on, as he has not responded to TjekDet’s inquiry. It could very well be SS Dorchester. The sinking of the American ship plays a leading role in a one-and-a-half-minute campaign video that President Donald Trump released in April 2024, in which he strongly courts the Greenlanders.
The video paints a picture of a strong bond of fate between Greenland and the United States. The voiceover tells us that the United States sent the troops “not to conquer, but to protect”. Whether that is the whole truth, we will return to.
However, the attack on SS Dorchester was not the only time the United States suffered losses in relation to Greenland during the Second World War, Peter Harmsen explains.
“Members of the Coast Guard (US Coast Guard) are particularly worth mentioning.”
The Coast Guard’s ships and aircraft guarded Greenlandic waters and kept a particularly close eye on the German Nazis.
For example, an American Coast Guard aircraft, a J2F-4 Duck, crashed when it was sent out to rescue the crew from a B-17 bomber that had crashed. The bomber had crashed while searching for a C-53 transport aircraft, which had also crashed on Greenland’s ice cap in November 1942. In this chain of crashes, a total of eight Americans died.
“In total, between 20 and 30 Americans were killed during the war because they were on board aircraft that crashed on the ice cap. The exact number is unknown because the historical records are incomplete,” says Peter Harmsen.
The battle over the weather stations
During the Second World War, the Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol, later known as Sirius, was established because the Germans were very interested in Greenland, especially East Greenland.
As mentioned, meteorological data from Greenland was essential in order to obtain reliable weather forecasts for the following days.
“The Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol patrolled the coast and was tasked with preventing the Germans from establishing weather stations,” says Søren Rud.
According to Peter Harmsen, the patrols led to actual firefights on two occasions, when members of the Danish-Greenlandic sledge patrol clashed with German units manning weather stations in Northeast Greenland.
“In the spring of 1943, there was a Danish fatality, when a member of the sledge patrol was killed in a German ambush,” says Peter Harmsen.
In the second clash in 1944, there were no Danish fatalities, but a German soldier was killed.
“It was Corporal Eli Knudsen who was killed in 1943, and afterwards he, Captain Ib Poulsen and Sergeant Marius Jensen were awarded the ‘Legion of Merit’ by the US government for their efforts,” says Søren Rud.
No Greenlanders were killed in the fighting in 1943 and 1944. This was primarily because the Greenlanders were deployed as support personnel in the sledge patrol and had direct orders to avoid taking part in combat operations, Peter Harmsen explains.
In the battle over the weather stations, the Americans also became involved in the autumn of 1944, when they intercepted two German expeditions that were on their way to establish weather stations.
“There were no battles, because the Germans surrendered immediately,” Peter Harmsen points out, however.
There were also Danish losses at sea during the Second World War. A number of Danish and Greenlandic sailors died off the Greenlandic coasts during the war as a result of acts of war.
The Thule accident
After the Second World War, Greenland has not been involved in an actual war. Nevertheless, military fatalities have occurred among both Americans and Danes.
For example, a member of the Sirius patrol died in a snowstorm in January 1968.
More well-known is the so-called Thule accident, which occurred the same year. An American B-52 bomber crashed near Thule Air Base, which today is called Pituffik Space Base. On board was a crew of seven Americans, one of whom was killed.
The aircraft was part of the American Operation Chrome Dome during the Cold War, which involved monitoring and being prepared for a response if the Soviet Union were to attack the United States.
The aircraft was carrying four hydrogen bombs, which spread their radioactive content over a larger area at the crash site, and a major clean-up operation was launched.
Several of the more than 1,000 Danish and Greenlandic clean-up workers who worked to remove the radioactive material became ill in the years that followed. A study from 2005 showed that 410 out of 1,500 Danish clean-up workers had died of cancer.
However, the 2005 study could not demonstrate a link between the clean-up work and the number of deaths and cancer cases, which according to the study was not higher than among people outside the clean-up zone.
The question is whether the Thule accident should be included in the accounting of American and Danish loss of life in the protection of Greenland – given that it did not directly concern the defence of Greenland. That can be discussed. And according to the experts, the same can be said for a long series of the other incidents.
Did not exclusively concern protecting Greenland
Even though the campaign video focusing on SS Dorchester, which Donald Trump and the White House have shared on social media, tries to paint a picture that the US presence in Greenland during the Second World War was about protecting Greenland, that is not the whole truth.
Both Peter Harmsen and Søren Rud emphasise this.
“The Americans who were stationed on the island did not ‘defend’ Greenland in a traditional sense, for the simple reason that the Germans at no point had plans to conquer Greenland,” says Peter Harmsen.
The reason for the presence is instead found in strategies and resources.
“The Americans and the Allies needed to be in Greenland because of cryolite, which was used in the production of aluminium for aircraft, to carry out weather observations, and to use Greenland as a stopover and refuelling station for aircraft before they flew on to Europe,” Søren Rud points out.
Peter Harmsen makes the same point.
“Greenland was not a theatre of war, but an essential point in the logistical network that supplied Allied troops in Europe and enabled them to fight Hitler,” Peter Harmsen adds.
That is why it is also important that the nuances surrounding the many soldiers who lost their lives on the Dorchester in 1943 are included, both of them stress.
“It is not wrong to say that they died in connection with the defence of Greenland. But at the same time, we also need to be clear about what we mean by the word ‘defence’,” Peter Harmsen explains.
There is, however, no doubt that Donald Trump is currently using these narratives – without the historical nuances – to his advantage.
“It is probably more correct to say that the soldiers on the Dorchester died as part of the Allies’ fight against Nazism. It is nevertheless clear that the current American administration is using the story as propaganda by painting a picture that the many Americans on the ship died to protect the Greenlanders,” says Søren Rud.
The above is not an exhaustive list of Danish and American deaths related to military actions in Greenland, but rather, according to the experts, the most significant points.
TjekDet has tried to obtain a comment from Rasmus Jarlov, but he has not responded to our questions.