Greenland, some history

Denmark Surrendered Greenland Once; It Should Do It Again

Greenland did not drift into American stewardship by accident. It arrived there because Denmark dropped it. That fact is routinely obscured by euphemism and sentiment, but it is the hinge on which the entire moral and legal argument turns.

In April 1940, Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. Copenhagen fell in hours. Its government capitulated and chose accommodation over resistance. Danish state institutions continued to function under German supervision, cooperating administratively and economically with the occupying power. Its armed forces stood down.

And its far-flung colony in the Arctic was abruptly severed from the metropole. No money. No ships. No defense. No instructions. Denmark did not merely lose control of Greenland. It relinquished it, while collaborating under and alongside a hostile regime, in every way that matters.

This is not a rhetorical flourish. Sovereignty is not a feeling. It is a bundle of responsibilities. Defense, finance, and foreign relations are the core of that bundle. When a state permanently abandons those functions over a territory, sovereignty becomes an empty word.

In 1940, Denmark did exactly that. It could not defend Greenland. It could not finance Greenland. It could not communicate with Greenland in any reliable way. And worse, it had placed itself under the effective control of a hostile power.

Greenland, however, did not follow Denmark down that path. Unlike Copenhagen, Greenland refused to recognize Nazi authority. Its local officials rejected German claims and treated Denmark’s capitulation as legally and morally irrelevant to the island’s future. Faced with isolation and an existential threat, Greenland’s leaders chose alignment with the only power capable of protecting them.

In April 1941, months before Pearl Harbor and before the U.S. formally entered the war, Greenland signed an agreement with the United States placing its defense under American protection. This was one of America’s first forward defense commitments of WWII.

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