America’s 150-Year Long Quest to Get Greenland

Lee Habeeb (00:18):
This is Lee Habeeb and this is Our American Stories. Despite having a population of only fifty-five thousand people, about as many as the capital of our nation’s least populated state, Wyoming, Greenland has been in the news a lot, and not just recently. That’s because Americans have always been keen on perhaps taking it for ourselves. Here to share

Lee Habeeb (00:41):
the story of our nation’s long fascination with Greenland is Mark Koyama, author of America, but Bigger. Let’s get into the story.

Mark Kawar (00:52):
In 2019, Donald Trump surprised America by talking about buying Greenland. It’s something that America has done in its past. It’s acquired territory, but it seemed strange to listeners in the twenty first century. And I’m into maps. I heard the news and decided what would America look like

Mark Kawar (01:13):
if it had Greenland as well? And then I thought, well, I should really adD.C.anada and Mexico to the map, because the United States has tried to acquire them in the past as well. Pretty soon this map got bigger and bigger, and more and more detailed, and I kept learning more and more stories about places around the world that could have become part of the United States, and

Mark Kawar (01:33):
I’ve learned Donald Trump wasn’t the first American president who tried to acquire Greenland. The first American to get really interested in Greenland was William Seward, Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State and probably America’s most ambitious annexationist.

Montie Montgomery (01:49):
Here’s Wayne Jensen of the Alaska Historical Commission with more on this man.

Wayne Jensen (01:53):
He thought all of North America should be part of the United States. British Columbia, the Panama Canal Zone—those were among his pet projects. Samoa, Guam. The Guano Islands Act was a bill that Seward introduced in the Senate, and it said that the United States could claim any uninhabited atoll or island that wasn’t under the control of another

Wayne Jensen (02:16):
country and that contained.

Montie Montgomery (02:17):
Guano, otherwise known as bird or bat poop. I’m not joking about that either. This stuff was critically important to fertilizers, but it

Wayne Jensen (02:25):
Was also an important component of gunpowder. The United States claimed over one hundred atolls or islands, mostly in the Pacific, and there was one in particular that would be a particular strategic importance if there was ever an international war.

Archival Audio (02:40):
Hardly had the din of guns been hushed in the Coral Sea when the Battle of Midway blazed forth in all its mighty fury. Here the United States forces met and crushed the full Japanese battle fleet.

Wayne Jensen (02:52):
The Battle of Midway turned out to be the turning point in the war in the Pacific, and that was one of those islands that was claimed by the United States under that bill. The only thing, though, that happened during his term as Secretary of State was the acquisition of Alaska. It wasn’t called Alaska at that time, it was called Russian America, and they were interested to see

Wayne Jensen (03:14):
if the United States had any interest in that territory. Russia offered ten million, Seward offered five, and they settled very quickly at seven, which was Seward’s maximum. And the czar came back and said, yeah, that looks like a good idea. There was a fake ad that was placed in the New York Herald which said cash cash cash cash paid

Wayne Jensen (03:35):
for cast-off territories, best price given to old colonies north or South. Any impoverished monarchs retiring from the colonization business may find a good purchaser by addressing William Henry Seward, Post Office, Washington, D.C..

Mark Kawar (03:49):
But he also had his eyes on Greenland. He commissioned a report. Just after the Civil War. He was negotiating with Denmark about buying the Danish West Indies, which the US did eventually acquire decades later and are now the US Virgin Islands. But he thought, maybe we can expand the negotiations, maybe we’ll acquire from Denmark not just the

Mark Kawar (04:11):
West Indies, but also Greenland and Iceland. So he commissioned a report looking at the resources of Greenland and Iceland. It came to the conclusion, yes, the US should acquire these two territories. But before he could make any progress, the political tide in Washington turned against him. Andrew Johnson was now president after Lincoln’s assassination. Seward had continued as

Mark Kawar (04:33):
his Secretary of State, and Johnson was really feuding with Republicans in Congress, and after the purchase of Alaska, the Republicans just said enough, we’re not handing Seward and Johnson another win. There might have been some interest in Greenland, but it was the wrong messenger. The next big push

Mark Kawar (04:56):
of American interest in Greenland was in the early twentieth century, when Denmark had settlements in the south of Greenland. Northern Greenland was largely unexplored until Americans started exploring it. Explorers like Robert Peary, who is often credited with first reaching the North Pole. He trekked across northern Greenland, planted the US flag. Wanted Greenland to become part of the United States,

Mark Kawar (05:19):
and there were American diplomats who supported that and wanted to make a trade with Denmark. Woodrow Wilson was interested in that idea, but eventually came to the conclusion that no, the territory I really want from Denmark is the Danish West Indies, what are now the US Virgin Islands. The Panama Canal had just opened the Virgin Islands were on the approach

Mark Kawar (05:41):
to it. So he made a trade and he bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark, and as part of the deal, he gave up any rights that the United States might have had to Greenland. So the US might have had a good claim to these parts of Northern Greenland based on this exploration by Americans, Wilson gave them up.

Archival Audio (06:04):
War Dramatic action reaches the far north as Coast Guardsmen blast their way through ice floes off Greenland in an attempt to break up establishment of Nazi bases.

Mark Kawar (06:16):
The third attempt on Greenland was after World War Two. Denmark had been conquered by Nazi Germany and it basically lost control of Greenland.

Montie Montgomery (06:25):
Here’s Ryan Semansky, the curator for the Battleship New Jersey in Camden, with a little bit more on what that meant. His full video on the subject can be found on the New Jersey’s YouTube page. Definitely go check it out. It’s great well.

Ryan Szimanski (06:38):
Denmark was occupied by the Nazis. Their overseas possessions didn’t recognize the authority of the puppet government. The Nazis didn’t have the power to project control over those islands. That said, the Nazis do. Actually land troops—might not be the right word, but they land Nazis to set up weather stations.

Mark Kawar (07:00):
So American troops moved in. They had the consent of the Danish ambassador to Washington, but not the government and occupied Denmark.

Ryan Szimanski (07:08):
This is where Titanic comes into the story. Following the loss of Titanic in nineteen twelve, a number of international countries came up with the Ice Patrol, which primarily involved the United States Coast Guard. Because the United States Coast Guard was plugged into this international safety situation, and because at this time the United States was still neutral, the

Ryan Szimanski (07:29):
Danish islands were far more interested in having United States troops take over their protection from Denmark while the Nazis controlled Denmark than in having a belligerent country like Great Britain or Canada come in.

Montie Montgomery (07:44):
By the way, that aforementioned ambassador to the United States, his name was Heinrich Kaufman, and when he signed the Greenland Defense Agreement with the US, he technically committed an act of treason. The puppet Danish government and occupieD.C.openhagen declared his actions illegal and actually tried him in absentia for treason. He was convicted and stripped of his position.

Montie Montgomery (08:05):
He’s considered by most Danes today to be a national hero.

Mark Kawar (08:09):
So they moved in, set up military installations, and really jump-started the Greenland economy.

Ryan Szimanski (08:16):
Next to the Panama Canal, which allows American warships to transit from one ocean to another, the Greenland Iceland UK Gap is the most strategic waterway the United States protects. Predicting the weather in Europe required having weather stations out here to be able to pick up storm fronts on their

Ryan Szimanski (08:38):
way in this direction. Notably, the Allies used their weather detecting ability to schedule the D-Day landings, which were originally scheduled for June 5, nineteen forty four, but given meteorological data, General Eisenhower realized he was going to have a break in a stormfront, which allowed him to push it back to June 6, which ended up being a

Ryan Szimanski (09:00):
perfect landing opportunity. The Germans, believing that the storm was coming through and that would prevent any landings, were not prepared, with folks like General Erwin Rommel, in charge of the defenses, going home to celebrate his wife’s birthday because the inferior Nazi weather reports said that it was going to be bad weather all throughout.

Mark Kawar (09:22):
And after the war, the US wanted to stay. They offered Denmark $100 million in gold to keep Greenland. Denmark wasn’t interested, but they did say, well, you can’t have Greenland, but you can have everything you want out of Greenland. We’ll make a treaty with you to give you all the military access you want and you can build bases and be responsible for Greenland security. And the

Mark Kawar (09:46):
US thought that was a good deal. This is the era where it’s no longer bigger is better, it’s get what you want without too much territory. So instead of buying Greenland, the US got military basing rights in Greenland, and there’s still a US base there today.

Lee Habeeb (10:04):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Montie Montgomery. And a special thanks to Mark Koyama, author of America, but Bigger Near Annexations from Greenland to the Galápagos, and what a story he tells about Greenland and our early ambitions to get it, starting with Seward, who of course purchased Alaska, and then Denmark

Lee Habeeb (10:25):
was occupied by the Nazis and American troops moved in, and after the war the US wanted to stay and offered a hunk of cash to buy it. But the deal was simpler. You can’t have Greenland, but you can build bases on it and use it as you may. And that’s where we stand today, the story of Greenland and America. Here on our American Stories