Talk:Greenland in World War II

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Military history: European / Nordic / World War II

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Untitled

How were the seemingly high casualty figures arrived at? How would the Germans ever have landed 19,000 men on Greenland? These figures are grossly inaccurate.

Those numbers are not thousands of soldiers; they are the actual numbers in action along the very empty east coast of Greenland. David Howarth's book, based on interviews with the people involved and other research, describes the tiny Sledge Patrol (15 people). The German "invasion" consisted of one small boat, the trawler Sachsen, with a crew of 18, led by Captain Hermann Ritter. Ritter was charged with setting up a clandestine weather station on the east coast of Greenland, to provide tactically-useful weather forecasts. At one point, a member of the Greenland Sledge Patrol was shot and killed by the Germans. The numbers in the article are correct according to Howarth's book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by JudithLAnderson (talk • contribs) 04:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tackling issues

I've put a basic structure to the article but am not qualified to improve it. Three areas from a general point of view would be

It has the wrong type of info box, I think. This gives the impression the whole of Greenland's war effort was conducted by junior officers and less than a score of combatants
The see also section could really do with looking over to see which of these could be added as inline citations and which might be weeded out.
The mini-essay on the Northland could be edited into the text. I've linked it to the Northland's wikipage for those wanting further details of this interesting vessel.

Monstrelet (talk) 17:29, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bibliography

Balchen, Brent. War Below Zero: The Battle for Greenland. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1944

Conn, Stetson, and Byron Fairchild. The Framework of Hemisphere Defense. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1960

Conn, Stetson, Rose C. Engelman, and Byron Fairchild. Guarding the United States and its Outposts. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1964

Epstein, M. (editor). The Statesman's Year-Book: Statistical and Historical Annual of the States of the World for 1941. London: Macmillan, 1941

Hansen, Wallace. Greenland's Icy Fury. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1994

Howarth, David. The Sledge Patrol. London: Collins, 1957

Kray, William. Bluie West One: Secret Mission to Greenland, July 1941: The Building of an American Air Force Base. Bennington, VT: Merriam Press

Liversidge, Douglas. Third Front: The Strange Story of the Secret War in the Arctic. London: Souvenir Press, 1960

Novak, Thaddeus D. Life and Death on the Greenland Patrol, 1942. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005

Zuckoff, Mitchell. Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II. New York: Harper, 2013

Found these on Stone and Stone. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 17:49, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Other resources removed from "See also" section of article

I have moved these entries from the article because they detract from the reference section of the article and are not really organized enough for the reader to make use of to any great extent. It is my hope to put them back into the article as they are needed as references, but in a logical order. Cuprum17 (talk) 02:32, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The most detailed account of U.S.-Greenland relations 1940-42 is in Finn Loekkegaard: Det Danske Gesandtskab i Washington 1940-42 (includes a summary in English). Copenhagen, 1968.
The most detailed accounts of wartime activities in Greenland are in unit records at the Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and in Coast Guard archives at the National Archives and Records Administration, NARA 2, College Park, Maryland.
Diplomatic details of the period may be found in Foreign Relations of the United States, and the Canadian equivalent.
Finn Gad: Gronland under Krigen. Copenhagen, 1945.
Bernt Balchen: War Below Zero. 1944.
The Sledge Patrol - By David Howarth
History of Greenland from the point of view of the US Coast Guard^{[dead link]}
Northeast Greenland Sledge Patrol

The US Coast Guard Cutter Northland seized the Norwegian trawler Buskoe in September 1941. (In 1940, she had not interfered with the Norwegian resupply ship "Ringsel.") The legally ambiguous Buskoe event is often credited as the first U.S. naval seizure of the war. The captain was CMDR Edward H. Smith USCG, "Ice Berg Smith" a man in his forties and a well-known oceanographer. "Northland" also rescued many downed US Army Air Corps flyers from the ice cap (see P38 Glacier Girl). "Northland" was based out of Boston, MA. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Northland was also powered by sail. An internet search will reveal photos of Northland under sail. The news article on the attack on the German radio station was first published in Post magazine titled: First Blow. http://www.jacksjoint.com/cutter_northland_at_war.htm http://www.jacksjoint.com/crash_in_greenland.htm http://fineartamerica.com/featured/coast-guard-cutter-northland-william-h-ravell-iii.html http://www.uscg.mil/history/webcutters/northland_1927.pdf http://www.uscg.mil/lantarea/cgcNorthland/history.asp

Extensive history related to the Northland and Captain Smith http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pdf/iip/history/The_Coast_Guard_and_the_Greenland_Patrol.pdf

Creating new articles

Perhaps it would be better if some of the specific German weather expeditions, like Operation Edelweiss II , were given their own articles? Using information from some of the sources I've found, this would allow us to give specific accounts of what happened to the Germans and the Allies, and also provide more exact casualty counts and give the commanders of each operation. I feel like if we tried to insert that info into this general article, it might get bogged down too much in certain areas. Indy beetle (talk) 17:12, 28 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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Lack of appropriate information.

With regards to the United States Army, this Article does not list the Army itself, not it's Commander, it's strength, or it's composition. It also fails to provide proper details to the U.S. Occupation's occupying forces, or the German forces. In addition, an additional article will likely be created by myself I'm the near future detailing the occupation itself, and not the broad history of Greenland during this period. Markovich Rashkolnikov (talk) 05:19, 21 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's entirely possible that you've advanced in leaps and bounds since writing this, but my suggestion is that you wait a while - perhaps several years - before trying to make a new article on this or any other topic. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 10:29, 26 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]