Post Reply - Greenland

Bluie

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_World_War_II_(1814%E2%80%931945) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_World_War_II_(1814%E2%80%931945) Greenland's connection to Denmark was severed on 9 April 1940, early in World War II, after Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. On 8 April 1941, the United States occupied Greenland to defend it against a possible invasion by Germany.^[60] The United States' occupation of Greenland continued until 1945. Greenland was able to buy goods from the United States and Canada by selling cryolite from the mine at Ivittuut. In World War II, the United States military used Bluie as a code name for Greenland, where they kept several bases named "Bluie (East or West) (sequential numeral)".^[61] The major air bases were Bluie West-1 at Narsarsuaq and Bluie West-8 at Søndre Strømfjord (Kangerlussuaq), both of which are still used as Greenland's major international airports.
During this war, the system of government changed: Governor Eske Brun ruled the island under a law of 1925 that allowed governors to take control under extreme circumstances; Governor Aksel Svane was transferred to the United States to lead the commission to supply Greenland. The Danish Sirius Patrol guarded the northeastern shores of Greenland in 1942 using dog sleds. They detected several German weather stations and alerted American troops, who destroyed the facilities. After the collapse of the Third Reich, Albert Speer briefly considered escaping in a small aeroplane to hide out in Greenland, but changed his mind and decided to surrender to the United States Armed Forces.^[62]
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In 1867, United States Secretary of State William H. Seward worked with former senator Robert J. Walker to explore the possibility of buying Greenland and, perhaps, Iceland. Opposition in Congress ended this project.^[63] Following World War II, the United States developed a geopolitical interest in Greenland and in 1946 offered to buy the island from Denmark for $100,000,000; the Danish rejected the offer.^[64]^[65]
In 1951 Denmark and the United States signed the Greenland Defense Agreement, which allowed the United States to keep its military bases in Greenland, and to establish new bases or "defense areas" if deemed necessary by NATO. The U.S. military could freely use and move between these defense areas, but was not to infringe upon Danish sovereignty in Greenland.^[66] The United States greatly expanded Thule Air Base between 1951 and 1953 as part of a unified NATO defence strategy. The local population of three nearby villages was moved more than 100 km (62 miles) away in the winter. The United States tried to construct a subterranean network of secret nuclear missile launch sites in the Greenlandic ice cap, named Project Iceworm. According to documents declassified in 1996,^[67] this project was managed from Camp Century from 1960 to 1966 before abandonment as unworkable.^[68] The missiles were never fielded, and necessary consent from the Danish Government to do so was never sought. The Danish government did not become aware of the programme's mission until 1997, when they discovered it while looking, in the declassified documents, for records related to the crash of a nuclear-equipped B-52 bomber near the Thule air base in 1968.^[69]
DJ, One could claim that Denmark was the official ruler in Greenland but de facto/in fact-after 1940 till around 1990 in lots of ways the US could do its things-as long as they were "strategic" and via NATO etc. without Denmark often being aware what was happening...