Personally I think the Danes would never sell because of the "where will we go if the Germans/Russians invade" concern.
Personally I think the Danes would never sell because of the "where will we go if the Germans/Russians invade" concern.
Personally I think the Danes would never sell because of the "where will we go if the Germans/Russians invade" concern.
Like I posted earlier, it has Uranium. Uranium for bombs and power stations.
It also has allot of Rare Earth Elements.
During WWII Greenland in all but formalities was annexed by USA and probably only was handed back due to a very effective Danish Ambassador in Washington and Denmark after all ending up recognised as an allied nation - and of course Denmark being in the western camp during the Cold War.
USA was given rights to build and maintain a large base at Thule in Northern Greenland in the early warning radar chain vs. Soviet missile attack. B52 bombers also routinely used the base and it was constant challenge for various Danish governments to on one hand claim that Danish territory held no nuclear weapons and OTOH keep eyes shut in Greenland. Especially when a B52 carrying nukes crashed at Thule in late 60s.
A Danish Government for some reason negating USA base rights or whatever USA thought it needed in Greenland would instantly mean USA taking full control of Greenland - call it annexation or not - too much was at stake in the cold war.
Concerning the Danes and Greenland I think most Danes at least then had a weak spot in their hearts towards Greenland and the Greenlanders (even when not sober) and perhaps also a degree of bad consciousness over the centuries of colonisation. In an ATL where perhaps Denmark is more devastated by the war and the political system is more unstable (seen from USA) I think an offer from USA to pay good money to take over the responsibility for Greenland could be accepted in Denmark.
Today I think the Greenlanders if asking, would not be half way through the word "Independence" before they got it. They have home rule, but their main problem is how to spare the 550 m $ Greenland receive from Copenhagen each year (10.000 $ pr. Greenlander + expenses of fishery inspection etc.). They hope that eventually oil and other natural resources will make independence realistic
My mistake overlooking that.
There's some disturbing parallels. There was quite a bit of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation. Today it's an environmental catastrophe, tailings left exposed, water supply contaminated, and a huge jump in the number of cancer deaths of Navajos, esp the miners who were often not given adequate protection.
Likely Cold War pressures to mine no matter what the cost to the locals could lead to the same things happening to Inuit.
I'd think this would be treat a whole lot different to Iceland.
With Iceland it was the people there deciding of their own accord to be free and independant. Very well.
Here though they're just selling their people into colonialism under someone else.
You simply don't read whats written!
The Danish Government was very upset by the Icelanders "running off" at a time when it was barred from doing anything against it!
I've used two post's to say this.
Even if everybody knew that the Icelanders were going to demand independence soon it was expected to find a settlement that would satisfy both parties.
At this time a Greenland sale under OTL conditions were not in the cards!!!
I can't imagine Greenland being a state, certainly not before Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa.
Actually, with the mention of Puerto Rico, it might be possible for the US to allow Greenland, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico into the union as the state of Atlantica(?). We might (an even bigger strecht) get Pacifica with Guam, American Samoa, Northern Marianas, and the smaller US owned Islands.
Now if either of these things happened it would still need to be after Hawaii and Alaska are admitted into the union.