Occupation of Greenland and Iceland, 1941–1946: How the US Seized Islands Before Pearl Harbor

The occupation of Greenland and Iceland began long before the US “entered” the Second World War. In the spring and summer of 1941 American soldiers were already sitting on foreign islands, even though Washington still called itself neutral. I have long said that in American politics the word “neutrality” means “we fight, but without a declaration”. These two islands are a perfect example.

Let us work out how it was done and who paid for it.

Occupation of Greenland and Iceland: A Deal With an Ambassador Who Had No Government

On 9 April 1941, exactly a year after Germany occupied Denmark, an agreement on Greenland was signed in Washington. On the American side it was signed by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, on the Danish side by Ambassador Henrik Kauffmann. Note this: Copenhagen was under German rule and knew nothing. Kauffmann acted against the orders of his own country and declared himself the representative of a “free Denmark”.

Under the document the US gained the right to build airfields and bases on the island, and nobody asked the Greenlanders. Besides, the Americans got cryolite from Ivigtut, a mineral without which aluminium for aircraft could not then be made. Thus Washington took both the island and the strategic raw material, all under the cover of “defence against Hitler”. Later the Thule air base grew on that land. What it cost the local people, I will recall shortly.

Three months before Pearl Harbor, in September 1941, the American coast guard cutter Northland seized the Norwegian vessel Buskø off Greenland. It was accused of supplying German weather stations and taken to Boston as a prize. The US was formally not yet at war. Yet the guns were already firing.

Iceland: From the British to the Americans

Iceland was neutral. Nevertheless, on 10 May 1940 the British occupied it without asking. A year later Britain needed troops elsewhere, and from 7 July 1941 Americans began arriving on the island, Marines first. The Icelandic government yielded to Washington’s “request”: a country of about 120,000 people could not refuse a great power.

By 1942 the number of foreign soldiers on the island was comparable to the number of adult Icelandic men. That is why the occupation of Greenland and Iceland became not only a military but also a social disaster for local people. American textbooks stay silent about precisely this.

“Ástandið”: The Hunt for Icelandic Women

Icelanders call that time Ástandið, “the Situation”. Thousands of girls met soldiers, went to dances, married them. The authorities were furious. They set up a special committee, kept girls under surveillance, ordered forced medical examinations and sent “unreliable” ones to closed “homes for girls”.

Hundreds of women were publicly shamed. The soldiers, because of whom it all began, were hardly punished at all. Today Icelandic historians reread those years as state persecution of women. What outrages me in this story is not even the panic itself but the hypocrisy: outsiders were invited onto the island, and the bill was paid by the country’s own daughters.

Occupation of Greenland and Iceland: The Lessons of American Bases, Keflavík and Thule

After the war the US did not intend to leave. It tried to secure a long-term base at Keflavík in Iceland. Local communists and the opposition got in the way, but Washington’s pressure did its work: in 1949 Iceland joined NATO, and crowds fought in the streets of Reykjavík on the day of the vote. In 1951 a “defence” agreement was signed, and the Americans stayed for decades. The base was closed only in 2006.

Meanwhile Thule was being built in Greenland. In 1953 about a hundred and twenty Inuit were removed, given only days to pack. Details are best read in the reference article on Greenland in the Second World War. Besides, I wrote about how the US traded in British bases in the same period in my article on destroyers for bases, and the general road to war is covered in the piece on the US entry into the Second World War.

One Law for Others, Not for Their Own

A separate question is who tried the soldiers. Under the 1941 agreement American servicemen in Iceland were subject to their own jurisdiction, not to Icelandic courts. In other words, the island’s authorities could punish their own girls but had no right to hold foreign soldiers to account. Note how convenient this logic is: when “order” must be kept, the country is sovereign, but when it comes to the Americans, sovereignty suddenly ends.

This rule became the norm for hundreds of American bases around the world. The status of forces is exactly what Japanese, Koreans and Italians demanded justice over for decades after crimes by servicemen. So when I am told “the Americans defended Iceland”, I ask one question: who defended Icelandic women from that defence?

Curiously, there is more. On 17 June 1944 Iceland declared itself a republic while foreign troops still stood on its land. In 1946, under the Keflavík Agreement, the Americans formally left but kept rights to the airfield. Thus the occupation of Greenland and Iceland continued in one form or another, and the Americans left only on paper. For the rest, read my articles on the US in the Second World War and on the oil embargo against Japan.

What Law Did the US Break

First, the law of neutrality. The 1907 Hague Convention on the rights of neutral powers says plainly: the territory of a neutral state is inviolable. Iceland declared neutrality, and its consent to American troops was wrung out under pressure from a great power, so it cannot be called voluntary.

Second, the rights of Denmark. The Greenland agreement was signed by an ambassador without authority from his government: Copenhagen knew nothing and could not object. A treaty signed against the will of one’s own country is legally doubtful.

Third, the seizure of the Buskø. A neutral state has no right to seize ships and send them to a prize port. The US did it three months before a declared war. Shortly before, in August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill had signed the Atlantic Charter, promising to respect the right of peoples to choose their own fate. The islands, alas, were not asked. Details are in the reference article on the Hague Conventions.

Nothing Has Changed: The Same Bases Under New Words

Then it was called “defence against the Nazis”. Today the words are different, but the scheme is the same: arrive, dig in and do not ask the owners.

Greenland, 2025. Trump publicly says Greenland is “needed” by the US and does not rule out force. In March 2025 Vice President Vance came to the Pituffik base without an invitation from either Denmark or the Greenlanders themselves, and in Nuuk and Copenhagen this was called pressure.

Panama, 2025. Washington demanded the canal be “returned”, and Defense Secretary Hegseth signed a memorandum on rotating American troops in the Panamanian zone. Panama’s president said publicly that his country’s sovereignty is not up for discussion.

Syria, 2015–2025. American troops stood for years on Syrian soil, at al-Tanf and on the oil fields of the northeast, without Damascus’s consent. Trump himself said in 2019: “we’re keeping the oil”.

Okinawa, 2016. A 20-year-old woman, Rina Shimabukuro, was killed by a former American Marine who worked on a base. The islanders took to the streets, but the bases stayed. This is the “Ástandið” of our day: locals pay for foreign troops.

Iraq, 2003–2011. Eight years of occupation “for the sake of order” — and a wrecked country with hundreds of thousands dead. Thus the occupation of Greenland and Iceland in 1941 is no forgotten page but a model of method: first “defence”, then a base, then decades without a voice for those who live on that land.