Harmsen, Peter Greenland at War

United States, Germany and the Struggle for the Arctic, 1939–45

The interest in Greenland during the Second World War was a direct result of its important strategic location anyone who wanted to predict the weather in Europe had to station men on the huge, frozen island. The most famous example of Greenland's crucial contribution to the Allies' meteorological services is the accurate weather forecast in June 1944, which led to the decision to launch the invasion of Normandy. In addition, both before and after D-Day, weather reports from Greenland were indispensable for the Allies to carry out their bombing offensive against Germany. The Germans were aware of Greenland's meteorological importance and repeatedly attempted to establish semi-permanent weather stations along the sparsely populated east coast of the island. This led to an epic cat-and-mouse game in which members of the US Coast Guard, with the support of a famous sled patrol of Scandinavian adventurers, fought to locate and destroy the German bases before they could cause any damage. This story is little known, but the fact is that Greenland was the only part of the North American continent where German troops were present for almost the entire war. At the same time, the United States' entry into the war triggered enormous efforts to hastily build the necessary infrastructure in the form of ports and air bases, which made Greenland an important link in supplying troops and reinforcements across the North Atlantic despite fierce resistance from the German navy. While Allied ships crossed the waters off Greenland in large numbers, aircraft flew the so-called Snowball Route from Greenland via Iceland to the British Isles. This led to a series of tragic incidents, such as the sinking of the transport ship SS Dorchester off Greenland in February 1942, in which 674 of the 904 men on board lost their lives, including the four clergymen representatives of the Methodist, Reformed, Catholic and Jewish faiths who gave up their life jackets to save others. In July of the same year, one of the greatest emergency landings in history took place when the lost squadron, consisting of six P-38 Lightning fighter planes and two Flying Fortresses, made an emergency landing on a glacier in Greenland.