Denmark sells Greenland

in 1946 the US offered to buy Greenland for $100,000,000 from Denmark, i would like to know what changes this would have in the US, Denmark, & whoever else it may apply to. Could Greenland become a US state & the largest as well as least populated one at that too?
 

katchen

Banned
Reconstruction aid to recover from the Nazis.
Real question whether Congress would have ratified such a purchase. But if it had, there would be no talk of making Greenland an Innuit nation with 35,000 people. And Greenland has lots of rare earths and uranium and gold on the parts that the ice dosen't cover. And oil and gas offshore. But it would still be a US territory and therefore, the environmentalists would be trying to make the whole territory a national park by now. Environmentalists already regret the fact that Alaska has statehood.
 
Question: why did Denmark reject the deal OTL?

From what I can find from internet sources, the Danish were taken aback from the blunt way the deal was suggested (and possibly from the fact that the suggestion was even made) and never gave the idea the light of day.

This from the AP News Archive:

Secretary of State James Byrnes made the offer to visiting Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen in New York on Dec. 14, 1946, according to a telegram from Byrnes to the U.S. Legation in Copenhagen.

After discussing other security arrangements for Greenland, Byrnes said he told Rasmussen that perhaps an outright sale to the United States ''would be the most clean-cut and satisfactory.''

''Our needs ... seemed to come as a shock to Rasmussen, but he did not reject my suggestions flatly and said that he would study a memorandum which I gave him,'' he said.

The Archives file containing the Byrnes memo did not contain any indication of whether the Danes responded or simply let the matter die.
I'd assume it was a national prestige issue for the Danish and really not something they would want to even consider seriously. Remember that only 7 years later Greenland was made from a colony to an ordinary county under the Danish law and the locals become ordinary Danish citizens.
 

Rex Mundi

Banned
Reconstruction aid to recover from the Nazis.
Real question whether Congress would have ratified such a purchase. But if it had, there would be no talk of making Greenland an Innuit nation with 35,000 people. And Greenland has lots of rare earths and uranium and gold on the parts that the ice dosen't cover. And oil and gas offshore. But it would still be a US territory and therefore, the environmentalists would be trying to make the whole territory a national park by now. Environmentalists already regret the fact that Alaska has statehood.

You say that as if exploiting Greenland's uranium and oil without restriction isn't something we should stop.
 

ingemann

Banned
Question: why did Denmark reject the deal OTL?

USA offer to buy a ancient Danish colony, at point when nationalist sentiment run high in Denmark and USA and UK have already allowed Iceland to leave the union with Denmark. They couldn't have selected a worse time to offer to buy Greenland.
 
I presume the US wanted to have Greenland in order to base radar stations, bomber and intereptor bases at it. This is 1946, heavy bombers still have rather limited range. A base in Greenland would greatly aid reaching the USSR targets with bombers.
 
In the midst of the Cold War, I could see Greenland becoming a pretty heavily militarized outpost of the US. Even OTL, Thule AFB was an important strategic bomber base. Despite the cold, one could see it being used as both a missile base and sub base as well.

It could also play an interesting role in the development of transatlantic commercial aviation as a hub for US-Europe traffic if the old Bluie West WW2-era airbase at Narsarsuaq could be made suitable for commercial flights (located in a fjord in the southern part of Greenland, it's a notoriously difficult approach). You might see Pan Am and/or TWA use it as a transit point that would allow them to overfly Gander each way and stop there instead. While it's a bit off the Great Circle route, it would be within range of the long haul prop airliners of the day to most of the major cities on the East Coast and Europe. You could see a good chunk of the US East Coast having one-stop service to Europe a decade or so earlier than OTL and a much greater US presence at more European airports.

By now, it would probably largely be in disuse, but it could still be an important military resource as an airbase for deploying troops overseas and as a US territory or state, would no doubt still be getting air service between the US and Europe.
 
It would still be a territory, or some sort of unique arrangement like Puerto Rico, today if it was bought back then. It's just too thinly populated. Maybe if Iceland decides to stay Danish, the Danes might be more willing to let go of Greenland? I don't see how you can do that, though, given how decisive the vote was to become a republic.
 
Greenland does not have a large enough population to become a state, and is probably incapable of supporting any population large enough to become a state. It would eventually become a self governing territory of the United States, like Guam or American Samoa. It's possible it might become a Commonwealth like Puerto Rico or the Northern Mariana Islands, but the strategic importance of Greenland for hemispheric and North Atlantic defense would mean Washington has a very good reason to keep a tight eye on it so that might come only after the end of the Cold War.
 
Greenland is initially governed as a territory but it's eventually attached to this state of Newflound

The Federal government insists to this day that there's nothing it can do to rectify the spelling mistake made when Newflound achieved statehood. On the Capitol, all the other Congressmen laugh behind the Newflounders' backs whenever they bring it up.

:D
 
Mis-spelling NewfunLand fomented the formation of the NLF. "In Cod we trust".

I wonder if Greenland might have come to become a nuclear testing site. There was a belief, since proved quite wrong, that thermonuclear detonations could accomplish wonders in major construction projects, mostly the excavation portion.
 
. And Greenland has lots of rare earths and uranium and gold on the parts that the ice dosen't cover. And oil and gas offshore.

Minerals so valuable that no one has bothered with them until now, iotl, more than half a century later?

As far as i can tell, there has existed a grand total of one mine in all of greenland, and it wasnt built for some time after this proposal.

Note that the modern effort, for iron, not rare earths, would involve importing thousands of chinese workers....
 
I presume the US wanted to have Greenland in order to base radar stations, bomber and intereptor bases at it. This is 1946, heavy bombers still have rather limited range. A base in Greenland would greatly aid reaching the USSR targets with bombers.

Note that otl, thule base did not serve as an operational bombing base, although it seems someintercepter were based there.

Running caterpillar tractors with diesel engines is 'fun' in that part of the world. Running high performance aircraft? Ouch.

Of course, the us might not have realized how much of a problem it would be.
 
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