Empire: World History - 266. American Greenland: Nazis, Secret Nuclear Bases, & Trump (Ep 4)

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

When did the US first ask to buy Greenland? Why did America occupy the region in World War II? And how did a secret plan codenamed “Project Iceworm” lead to nuclear waste spilling on Greenland’s soil? Anita and William are joined by Daniel Immerwahr, author of How To Hide An Empire, to discuss the history of America’s involvement with Greenland, and Trump’s not so hidden imperial goals… ----------------- Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com. ----------------- Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk Blue Sky: @empirepoduk X: @empirepoduk Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me Anita Arlen. And me, William Duremberg. You're echoey because you're not at home. Where are you? I am in Scotland. I've just been to my nanny's 19. ninth birthday party.

And she's now almost completely blind and as deaf as a post, it was an odd. It was an odd lunch. Lots of shouting and Bonhomie. Lots of that shouting, Bonoie and fish and chips from Dino's and North Berwick by the beach. Can I just say, this little vignette into your life makes you sound both very posh, but very lovely.

So both of those food groups. Speaking of very lovely, we're delighted to be joined again by Daniel Imovar, author of Howt. hide an empire. He has been on this podcast before he's in an absolute superstar. And the reason that we've called you back, we've lured you back, is all thanks to your president, President Trump. So we've got him to thank for you coming back on. You must be delighted with him, Daniels. Does he do you feel that he has spoiled your thesis that America had a hidden empire?

Or has he made your entire career and brought you on every chat show in the land? It's not that hidden at the moment. His imperial desires are not hidden at all. No, and it's even worse than that because, I mean, for me, for my thesis, because I had said that there was a trend away from seizing large land masses toward a more insidious strategy of lots of little bases. I called it the Pointerlist Empire. Yes. And now we're back. You're back. I mean, we're still going to look back because I think it's really useful because he's drawing so much on figures that he appreciates and approves of from America's history. And so that's why we're going to take you all the way back to 1823, because I think it's really important to talk about the Monroe Doctrine, which was the first time that America started thinking, you know what? Spheres of influence, not pointillism, but big, great plodges on a map is what we need. So to remind people, what is the Monroe Doctrine? Who was President James Monroe? And what does President Trump draw from him? I unfortunately am going to offer a revisionist take on the Monroe doctrine. So historians sometimes get a little snoburn. hippie about how this gets used. This sort of one-line Wikipedia thing is the Monroe Doctrine was the

moment when the United States declared its domain over the entire Western Hemisphere. In fact, it was not any kind of announcement to world leaders. It was a message in front of Congress, and it was not known as a doctrine at the time. It was non-binding. It was non-committal. And it was just part of a sort of evolving conversation where after a lot of Latin American countries had received their independence. So actually, a lot of American countries had received their independence, including the United States. This was one of those American countries saying, you know, it looks pretty much now like the countries on this side of the world are independent of Europe. That's not totally true. There's still some European colonies. And this is 1823. So only about 20 years

earlier, less than 20 years earlier, the British had burned down the White House. It was just a moment of kind of naming these United American nations, which included Latin American ones, wouldn't welcome further European colonization. There were still European colonies in the Western Hemisphere, but that was kind of a just sort of, here's where we are at the moment. You're talking about rebranding it as the Monroe Musings. Not a doctrine. Just like, it was right. No, that's right. No one called it a doctor. No one recognized it as a doctrine at a time. It was not a huge deal. It became important around the time that the United States started snatching up other colonies because then it got sort of re-read, not as we would

not welcome for the European colonization in the Western Hemisphere. But in fact, this is the U.S. domain, that the U.S. is in charge of this entire hemisphere, which is not really part of what Monroe was saying. Oh, interesting. Okay. We love having you on because you turned everything upside down and inside out, which is what Donald Trump's done to your hidden empire. Oh, my God. I mean, it's just fair, I suppose. This is all very balanced.

Are you planning another volume, the Unhidden Empire or the Empire revealed, or is there a companion volume in the press? I sincerely hope not. I mean, you know. No, please, God, no. idea what it's going to look like in the next, you know, a couple of years. It could be nothing. It could be everything. It could be. It could be. It could be. Couldn't it? Yeah. I mean, the thing is that Trump is known for saying a lot of things that don't happen. That's something we got used to in the first presidency. And then in the second term,

we're getting used to him saying things that do happen. And it's unclear what what bucket this one falls into. And then things that happen that he then changes his mind about a week later, too. Exactly. Let's take him at his word. just for now, that he is going to take Greenland, and it is going to be his. And whether the Danes like it or not, or the people of Greenland like it or not, it is going to be his. Now, this is not the first time that America has toyed with ownership, as if it was a second-hand car, have another country called Greenland. Can you take us back to the first time? And this is 1867. And you've had the US on a buying spree anyway, because they've already purchased Alaska. That's in their basket. They've beeped that through. And they've now got their eyes on Greenland. Why, back in 1867, was Greenland important to them? I mean, it's not just Alaska. It's the United States had expanded extraordinarily by taking formerly Mexican lands. So there's a guy, William Henry Seward, who has a vision that there's no reason that this needs to be restricted to contiguous space or even to the North American continent. But it's the same idea. The United States is expanding. It's distributed.

recruiting homesteads to settlers. And he has a kind of rosy view of the temperature in both Alaska and Greenland. And so these are all potential ways for the United States to expand. And he's also interested in islands. So there's a list. Can you remind us how much did the United States purchase Alaska for? Because they bought it from the Russian Empire. I mean, it was nothing. It was peanuts, wasn't it? And a year later, they found oil there and it became an incredibly valuable I think all of this is a reminder that these claims, both Russian and U.S. claims, are fairly not like either of them has or is about to have a large settler presence. These are still made of lands. And a lot of American space in the Western Hemisphere is held by and controlled by

indigenous peoples through the 19th century. So there is this kind of game that European powers play, is this mine, is it yours? And they get to color and go to the map. But that doesn't mean that they're there on the ground. But Seward has a ballpark figure, certainly for Greenland from Denmark. So he says, I shall give you $5.5 million in gold. What do you think? What do you think, Denmark? There are questions about what counts as currency in the 19th century and gold is a good one, so that's part of it. But doesn't it just sound like such a good supervillain plan? I mean, honestly, if this was in vision, I'm doing my sort of, you know, Dr. Evil, little finger and math. 5.5 million dollars in gold.

What does Denmark say to this incredibly generous offer? I mean, does it rhyme with mugger off? I mean, it's a little bit like that, I think it sounds like. Does that mean then, okay, Seward says, I will buy this. And they say, we're not selling it. Nice of you. Thanks for coming, but no. Is that the end of the story?

Or do they still, and why Greenland? It's not in the thoroughfare of the world at this point, is it? It's not in the thoroughfare in the world at this point, but it is, if you're dividing the world up conceptually between the eastern and the western hemispheres, Greenland is kind of in the middle. And there's not a lot of places they're in the middle. So it could seem like the outermost frontier of the Western Hemisphere, if you're trying to control hemisphere, it could seem in some ways like a bridge to Europe. If your intellectual world is an Atlantic one, it's a big enormous space in the middle of the Atlantic. But no mineral deposits at this point are a driving force. There's no suspicion that this could be some kind of treasure trove for things that the United States would find useful. Okay, so just think about this. The United States negotiated a piece after it won a war with Mexico. And within days after annexing Mexican land, including California, it discovered gold there.

The same happened to Alaska. I think within literally two years after Alaska, they've had a major oil deposit. Yeah, and I think that's all another way of saying is that Europeans and settlers don't really know what's going on in these spaces. So it's not to say that they have a clear sense of, you know, we're going to unearth this there, but all these spaces are kind of pure potential for them. Right, so we can explore it and who knows what we'll turn up. So Denmark says mugger boff about Greenland, but there is another deal to, typically. be made in 1916, and this is a treaty the United States strikes up. A rather more attractive option that Virgin Islands get offered. Yeah, which are also Danish, and Seward had also been interested in.

And this time the Danes bite. This time the Danes bite. And one of the things that makes us more attractive from the Danish perspective is that in these days of technically we own it, but who knows what's going on there, the United States had advanced some a little more than notional claim. to the northern part of Greenland on the grounds that they had sent explorers there. And so it wasn't clear what that meant was the United States going to back these claims. No one was up there from either the United States or my understanding is from Denmark.

But the United States agreed to back off Greenland. That was part of the deal in exchange for, we'll take the Danish West Indies, which become the U.S. Virgin Islands. I mean, they offered a little more than 5.5. I'm keeping the face now that Dr. Evil, a little more than the 5.5 million in gold. This time for the Virgin Islands, it's 25 million. So, I mean, they do sort of, they buck up the offer substantially by 1916. This is another 40 years later, so prices have risen.

And it's also a World War I thing. Greenland is useful because it connects America to Europe. Weirdly, the Danish-West Indies are useful because they're in the Caribbean and they're an approach route to the Panama Canal, which connects the Pacific to the Atlantic. Another thing on the shopping list? Well, it's another thing the United States controls, but Woodrow Wilson, as president at the time, is nervous that the Germans might be able to get a foothold in the Caribbean and thus take the canal in the context of World War I. So this is a way of sort of buffering up U.S. control of that region. But what they do say, I mean, as you said just a second ago, they promise Greenland. If you give us the Virgin Islands, we promise not to bother you. Take your Greenland. Go happy. We're not going to bother you anymore. Well, it's not we promise never to ask for it again, but we promise that whatever.

ever-notional sovereignty claims we've made, we're not going to be enforcing this. But the Danes don't formally declare sovereignty over Greenland until 1921. So you've got a Greenland finally in 1921 say, this is all ours. Look, this is absolutely, and we're drawing a ring around it. And you promised, you promised United States, you're going to butt out, and this is all ours now. But America's still, in the 20s and 30s, they're starting to classify bits of the map of the world. And Greenland is categorized as Rainbow Ford. So Rainbow, Rainbow, for is that if the US was attacked on multiple fronts, it would invade Greenland immediately. Rainbow Four, it sounds so jolly and lovely, but they would go straight into Greenland in order to

protect North America. So there would be no if spouts or even chatting to the Danish. They would just take it. And that was because there was an existential threat they were feeling at that time. So this is a moment when if you're playing that map game and increasingly in the early 20th century, in the inner war period you are, you start to think about which flank is undefended. And Greenland does look like an important place. It's a big space on the map. It's a big space on the map. And not necessarily for the seward reason that you're going to send a lot of settlers there

because you have a misunderstanding of how warm it is. But yeah, it's useful in the great game of risk. The next development is 1940 when Nazi Germany rolls into Denmark. And so potentially the Nazis are now in Greenland. Yeah, this is the fear. And the United States responds exactly as you would expect or exactly as planned. It brokers a deal with the Danish minister. The Danish minister in exile.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And it's not going to annex Greenland. It will just take it for the war. To use Trump's nice phrase, acquire. Yeah. But part of that deal really is a kind of lot of hand-waving about sovereignty. They're like, we're not taking it for ourselves forever.

It's just... We're just looking after it for you. No, that's right. We're looking after it. You seem to be occupied by the Nazis, right? Yeah. So we'll just keep it warm just while you're busy. That's exactly right.

With the Nazis. While they're keeping it warm and cradling it as a good neighbor would, they do discover that Greenland is replete with something called cryolite. Before, they may not have known whatever the hell was on this great expanse called Greenland. But cryolite is an important mineral that the United States thinks is going to be very useful for the manufacture of aircraft and weapons because it's used to produce aluminum or aluminum, as you would say. Yes, please. In a way that we mock you relentlessly for. But, you know, so in the manufacture of aluminum, cryolite is, thank you, is very, very useful.

So now suddenly, this is not just something on a game of risk. This is something that can be exploited and useful at a time of war. So it turns into we're looking after your rabbit while you go on holiday to we actually, we could eat this rabbit. It's quite, we could do something here. We could do something with this rabbit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So does that explain why looking after the rabbit turns into a wholesale occupation, which really does start in 1940? Is it done by stealth or is it done with great fanfare that we're occupied?

We the Americans are occupying Greenland for your own good now. I think that part is real, like they are just looking. at who controls what territory and, you know, how can we defend against Nazi invasion. On the other hand, they are also not just looking at the map, but looking at the map anew because as territories shift colors in the game of risk, you then have to think, oh, like, where do we get rubber? Suddenly Japan just took over Southeast Asia. And so there's this weird calculation that both involves technology and territory,

where like, A, they're developing new technologies and they're like, okay, suddenly cryolate, we can do something. Yeah, we can use that now. A similar thing took place in the First World War with Soviet Union occupying Central Asia in order to get enough cotton to clothe the soldiers. Yeah, yeah. And what's interesting about the Second World War is that, like, midway through the war, they're learning new uses for resources.

So not only is the map shifting, but their sense of, like, what's valuable is shifting as they figure out how to use various resources in different technologies. Then we have the post-war period. and there's a formal offer in 1946 from President Truman. FDR's just died. Truman is in charge and he makes a formal offer to Denmark of 100 million. No, say it properly, 100 million dollars. In gold, if necessary. If you want gold, we'll do it in gold. But 100 million. We're not sad in your video. We can't see the little finger. Little finger going up to the corner of my mouth.

The thing about Truman, which was interesting, we've just done a fair few episodes on the Yarta Conference and basically how Roosevelt kept all foreign policy a complete secret from Truman. Didn't tell him anything. He didn't know about the bomb. Day one, he confesses to the Postmaster General, which, by the way, you're like,

why is he even talking to the Postmaster General? Because these are the people that Truman talks to. And he confesses, he's like, I know nothing of foreign affairs. Right. They're like, well, you're going to have to figure it out real quick, man. Ninety-four-six, an important year. So who's in his ear? Because if Truman is not a foreign affairs man, who is buzzing in his ear saying, you know what?

We know you probably can't find this on a map, President Truman. But. But... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Day one, the White House has a map room, and it's like, you know, blacked out curtains, huge map, all that kind of stuff. And Truman has never been there. And Truman has this little like World War One map from his like Senate office and he's like trying to follow the war. And so Truman just starts going to the map room.

And this guy, Admiral Leah, he is sort of like showing him everything. And they keep like giving him all these reports. And I mean, he's a serious student. He reports like reading so much every day that he's like worried about doing permanent damage to his vision. But what he's trying to figure out is the risk game. He's trying to figure out. He's like, oh, I guess we have bases everywhere. I guess we have troops everywhere.

And very quickly, he's just trying to sort of cram to the point where he can, you know, take over his president. Yeah, because he's not been briefed at all by the people who should have prepped him. So the war is still raging. FDR has died just after Yalta and Truman has taken over with pretty much no preparation at all. What is interesting, though, is he makes this deal for $100 million for Greenland again at this time. almost his first sort of foreign affairs big deal that he wants to make. But nobody gets to know about this, Daniel. It is entirely secret. It is a secret deal that we only get to know about in 1991.

Because, I mean, Time magazine catches wafts of this at the time, saying, is there some sort of strange shopping expedition the president's on? Is he offering great sums of money for great swathes of land? And it sort of gets pushed away. But in 1991, we get to find out. Yeah, no, it was true. So first of all, the deal doesn't go through, right? He doesn't get it.

But the thing that he's thinking about is one of the new technologies that has really changed people's understanding of how maps work is aviation. Suddenly, Greenland is no longer large. It starts to feel really central. And you start to see people in the United States say, actually, there's this whole movement, a very bizarre cartographic movement, against the Mercator map projection. They're like, this is screwed us up.

This map is totally wrong. It puts Japan on one side and it puts the United States on another. And in fact, Japan attacked us over the edge of the map. And like, we were getting wrong about that. But they're also say something which is, I think, really true. They're like, the Mercator map was really useful for the age of sale. And it's actually quite hard to show the, like, quickest routes for planes on a Mercator map. But if you have a globe or you have a map that allows this and you start looking at, like,

how would a plane get from, I don't know, North America to, I don't know, various capitals in Europe, it all goes over Southern Greenland. So suddenly they're like, oh, this place is really important, not just as a kind of buffer in the moat against the naval attack, but actually, like, everything is going to have to go through Greenland. You've said the word Mercado a few times, and just in case people don't know what this is. Sometimes we just sort of assume everyone knows all the chuntering that we do on this program. But the Mercator map projection is kind of a cylindrical projection of, the world map on flat. It was invented by a man called Gerardis Mercator in 1569. And as you say,

it was a navigational map. It was for people who wanted sea routes. And so things are distorted and things are not where you would actually bump into them if you're flying around, around globe or sailing around Earth. So the Mercator map is close to the kinds of classroom maps that people know. And one of the things that, you know, just comes up in sort of fifth grade is you're like, gosh, Greenland looks enormous. And then the teacher's like, okay, no, no, no, that's like a distortion of the map projection. It's not that it's big, but it's not that big. So in some ways, the Mercator map overstates the size of Greenland, but it also puts it on the periphery. Just as it understates the size of things like India and Africa. That's exactly right.

Brilliant episode of the West Wing. Have you ever seen it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So a huge fan of the West Wing, but there is this wonderful thing where they come up with the Peters map. And he's talking to CJ and saying, this is what actually countries look like in relationship to one another. And her brain is utterly blown by it. So Greenland, its size is overstated, but its centrality is understated by that map. And so that's what the new kind of air consciousness is you're supposed to be able to see. You're like, oh, Greenland is actually really strategically important to the United States in an age of aviation. So, I mean, the war runs its course.

And when it is over and they have to give the... the rabbit back to Copenhagen. But they do it sort of in a really, I won't say grudging, but they won't let go of a foot. They kind of hang on to the rabbit's foot because they say, you know what? You can have it back. But I think a lot of us just like it and going to stay. And so you've got American personnel, military personnel. And they refuse to leave. Yeah, they won't go. They're just saying, well, and Denmark says very politely, you know, thank you for looking after the rabbit. Could you go now? And they say, well, no, that's fine. and we were really happy to do it. No, we're not going. What weirdness is that, Daniel?

I mean, this is the weirdness of 1946. It's happening all over the planet. There's this great moment where Truman says, you know, the United States won the war. It is central to the peace. It is going to be the hegemonic power. And a lucky thing is that we, unlike other, you know, great powers that you might be able to think of, do not believe an empire. And we did not fight World War II for territory, and we covet no territory. And in fact, we're going to set our largest colony of the Philippines free. We're not that kind of country. We're the good guys. We're the good guys. And then there's this freak out in the military where they're like, did Truman just say we're not going to claim any territory? What about all the military bases? Like, oh, did he just give up

all the military bases that, you know, thousands of little, you know, air strips that we've claimed during the war? And then Truman has to go back and say, okay, you know, we're not, yes, we're not like colonizing, you know, India, but yeah, we're going to keep all the bases. We're keeping the bits that We like very much and we're already there. And it is very, very funny. We're going to take a break fairly shortly, but suffice to say. Denmark does ask numerous times politely for the Americans to please leave. Please go.

Please, please, please go. You've said you'd go. Why aren't you going? Please. When are you leaving? The fridge is empty. We've got things to. We've got places to be.

Some of us have to work and go. Bye. But they won't go. And it is hilarious because by spring, 1948, Denmark gives up, asking them to go. It just says, oh, man. They're not leaving. Have the foot.

I mean, just, you know, this is, we might as well just put barbedo around that and let them stay and just carry on. And look, here's an important thing to know. On the one hand, you look at the map and you're like, okay, they're still there, but they're just like on some bases. In terms of acreage, the United States is not taking a lot. But in terms of population, the U.S. is, putting so many people there that its personnel at this point represent a very large fraction

of the population, like more than 10% of the entire population. Well, it's like Diego Garcia, the Chegos Islands. I mean, sort of similar kind of thing. You know, we'll pump personnel and military hardware in here. Anyway, let's take a break, because something a little bit tricky is going to happen very shortly. And we just want to work out how exactly these two parties navigate because, well, here's a clue. There is a thing called NATO, which America has approved to the world, is a very, very good idea.

And Denmark wants to join. What happens next? Join us after the break. Welcome back. So in 1949, Denmark officially applies to join NATO and is accepted and is one of the founding members, along with the United States, the UK, France, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, I think.

I think that's all of them. But, I mean, the key thing there is you attack one of us, you attack all of us, right, Article 5. We all know about Article 5, we talk about Article 5 a lot. And these are brothers together. They're not meant to be nipping at each other's territories. I mean, that's the whole point of NATO. So what are the kind of conversations, convos going on at that time, considering Denmark's just basically got bored and tired of asking them to leave and they won't. Yeah, so the U.S. view is,

oh, you would like military protection? That's going to come from our military, not yours. Let's be honest. We are not very protected by the Danish military, but Denmark is protected from the U.S. military, and it would be a lot easier if you gave us a base or two. So there's this kind of basis for battleships style deal where if Denmark is willing to give the United States use of territory, then that military protection becomes a lot easier for the United States to offer. And the Danes, there's a trade minister called Jens Otto Krague, who is sort of realistic about this. He says the USA de facto partial occupation of green. Interesting, he calls it an occupation, which we do not possess the power to prevent, would cause the Soviet to see his country as an

American ally. And the Denmark should benefit from this relationship. If you've got a squat in my country, I may as well get something in return. Yeah, but let's say the other part of that because this is something that occurs to the Danes a lot in the post-war period. By you stationing your troops, and we'll presumably get to this, your nuclear arsenal on our territory, you are just painting targets. Because if there's a first strike, it's going to be on Greenland. Oh, it's tricky, isn't it, being a member of a club? It's really hard. It's really tricky.

Which brings us to the establishment of the two-day airbase in 1951. Tell us about that. Well, so, okay, the Soviet Union had just tested a nuclear device in 1949. So suddenly there's more than one nuclear power. And again, the map readers say, oh, if the Soviet Union were to try to fire, you know, a missile or fly a plane toward the United States, that route would go over Greenland, but it would go over Northern Greenland. So suddenly Northern Greenland is the pivot of the world. And this base at 2-way, which is in Northern Greenland, is an attempt for the United States to be able to monitor, to defend, to extend its defensive perimeter far beyond the borders of the United States, right up against the Soviet Union. So, I mean, it puts it clearly in the sights of the Soviets because NATO and then the creation of the Warsaw Pact is just showing you that the whole world is about to freeze over in the Cold War.

It is going to be a dangerous place. So in May 195, USSR sets up the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact has eight founder members just to, I mean, you know all this, but I've just remind you in case you haven't heard our previous episodes. They've got the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovak, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania. They also have a pact saying you attack one of us, you attack all of us. And things start reaching a boiling point.

And as the temperature gets higher, defense spending starts rocketing too. I can give you some numbers because they are, I mean, eye-watering. By 1953, the USA was spending 50 billion on the arms race. The USSR was spending 25 billion. And the USA, this means, had doubled its spending every single year between 1949 and 1953. Now, I mean, I'm guessing this makes the Danes a little bit nervous and they want to have some degree of separation from, you know, Greenland, nominally is ours, but let's not talk about it anymore because really you know it's the Americans and they've got all your nuclear capability on there, but please don't bomb us because they make a public show of banning nuclear weapons in 1957.

And this is sneaky, you know, in the relationship between the United States and Denmark. You know where I'm going with this. Tell us about the big sneak here because publicly they say, look, look, look, nothing to say, please don't bomb us. I know things are getting really, really bad. Greenland, Schmiel, it never was ours. We never owned that rabbit. That's their rabbit.

Please don't bomb us. Yeah, I mean, suddenly Greenland is right in the middle. Each side is armed to the teeth. And, you know, the Danish are like, oh, great. So there's a guy who's elected H.C. Hansen, who's elected government head on a plank that includes opposition to nuclear weapons in Greenland. Because if you put nuclear weapons in Greenland, two things could happen. One is that they could go off accidentally. That's a real risk.

Two, is that the fact that they're stationed there could mean that there would be Soviet attacks, nuclear attacks on Greenland. You don't want to be in the middle of that battlefield, and the Danes fully understand that. So they declare their opposition and that they will forbid nuclear weapons. And then the United States is like, okay, we're just going to assume that that was like for the voters. We're going to assume that what you're asking is just plausible deniability here because it's a political issue. So what if, and in fact, I'm just saying this out. out to myself because we're not even talking to you about it. What if we just do this and don't tell

you about it? Like, that seems like that would solve your problem with the voters and that would solve our problems. And now Greenland is a nuclear space. Everyone's happy. Yeah, everyone is happy. But again, that Tula air base is a place that becomes replete with nuclear weapons, even though Denmark saying, we don't have them, do not bomb us, we don't have them. They have them. They know they have them, but they're just pretending that they don't know that they have them. There's a whole city now which gets built. 1959, Camp Century, gets built under the ice. Yeah, they're doing three separate things.

On the one hand, they're just stationing them on the base. On the other hand, they are flying them over Greenland. The idea is that if you keep enough hydrogen bombs aloft, that the Soviets won't be able to strike where they're stored because they're in space. So at any time, there should just be planes flying over Greenlands with nuclear bombs. This is what Dr. Strange loves about. I mean, can I just say that doesn't sound very safe? Well, from an aviation perspective, it raises questions.

Yeah. And then they also have this idea that they're like, okay, well, the planes is one thing. But what if we also build these, like, ice tunnels? And then we just have the, like, bombs just shuttling through the ice tunnels at all times. So no one knows what they are. And maybe we can launch them straight from underground. All of this is happening. And it's literally, it's not just a tunnel of sort of half a mile.

This is thousands of kilometers of underground tunnels with. weapons moving around. They never get to the point where they're actually moving all the weapons through them. But yeah, they've built this little like underground Disney World with all the monorails going. With the best code name, sorry, I love a code name. As you know, Project Iceworm, ladies and gentlemen, Project Iceworm, where you're having nuclear weapons hurtling under the ice so that if somebody is to drop something and try and blow up the nuclear arsenal, they might just miss it. So, I mean, all of this just sounds completely bonkers. But then there is a nuclear reactor and you can't really, I don't know how much, how you can hide this, but a nuclear reactor is brought

to Toulay Air Base, and that happens in 1960. And actually, there are problems from this. This is no joke. Because it starts leaking radiation. Yeah, exactly. So the reactor becomes operational on the 2nd of October 1960. And soldiers who are living near it start having radiation sickness, the levels that they're exposed to are deemed unacceptably high. They start installing lead and shielding and trying to move people away. But even after that, and we'll talk about this very, very briefly, if they invite Boy Scouts, Daniel Mavar to come and spend some time in this fantastic Disney World on Ice. Yeah. So this is at the like the underground place. They have a nuclear power and they have like warm showers because of it. And they're like,

this is actually quite quite nice here under the ice. So they have these Eagle Scouts who are like walking around who have nothing to do because what do you do? So, the thing that they put them doing is they're like, okay, so we have all these tunnels. The problem is the tunnels are made of ice and it's very cold so that like actually every day the tunnels get a little smaller because the ice just built. So could you like just measure how much of a slow motion cave in we're dealing with? And so like these Eagle Scouts are just like watching, you know, helping to like shave the ice back off and just like watching these tunnels slowly contract. It's the worst camp trip in the history of camp trips. It's wild. Yeah. It is awful. But it's also

exposing them to radiation. I mean, this is after all the radiation leakage. So, I mean, it's just so... Poor Iridated Boy Scouts. It's so mad. In the 1960s, though, the camp century tunnels with these poor Eagle Scouts with their whittling knives, trying to keep back the ice and stop being irradiated to death. I mean, they do close the tunnels. And that's not because they suddenly think we might have done some real damage to some Eagle Scouts and also to our own personnel. but it's because there's a new breed of weaponry that doesn't need this kind of birth anymore, longer-range missiles.

I mean, there's two plans. There's one is you keep the missiles up in the air and you kind of hurl them through the air and the other is this complex ice tunnel plan. So the plane strategy is the one that's actually the dominant one. And as we said, it's a dangerous idea. And indeed, in 1961, it badly goes wrong. What happens do you think if you are carrying around,

like these, you know, these like B-52s have like, four hydrogen bombs on them. What do you think is going to happen if you just like every day are just putting these planes aloft? So first of all, they start doing emergency landings. So that's like pretty dicey, you know, and then. Nuclear bombs abroad. Yeah.

In 1968, one of them crashes. And it crashes into the ice at like more than 500 miles an hour, hard. And the story apparently was that there was a heater. They were obviously very cold up in the B-52 above Iceland. and they had a heater on and the heater lit up a rubber cushion. And the rubber cushion caught fire, then the entire cabin caught fire, and they bailed with four nuclear weapons on board. Hang on, they bailed and they left the plane with the nukes on. Yeah, I mean, what are you going to do?

You know, you're in a plane going down. You don't want to be on the plane at that point, you know? You do not. We need to now distinguish two things that can happen to an armed nuclear device. One is that it can detonate, and that's the kind of nightmare scenario, you know. The other is different is that it can explode. So the explosives go off, but they don't go off in the timed way that's going to compress the core and trigger nuclear fission. Because the bomb contains not only plutonium, but it contains all these explosives that are supposed to.

So all of the bombs explode. None of them detonate. But we are talking so much plutonium just all over that. It takes 75 tankers to recover the waste hastily before the ice thaws. and surely they did not get all of it. Right. So, I mean, are you saying there are bits of Greenland that glow in the dark unintentionally

because this stuff is still scattered all over the place? Well, it's that nice porridge you used to have. Ready break. Ready break. It would make you light up. I mean, dangerous levels, Daniel. I mean, I guess they're a bit secretive with how much nuclear material has been sprinkled

liberally over Greenland. But, I mean, how much are we thinking? I mean, we know how much it gets lost, which is four mark 22 hydrogen bombsworth, which is really dangerous. It's just not the sort of thing you want to mislaying. No, it's not. So they like try to just try to like scrape up all the debris and put it.

But but then at a certain point, the top level of ice is going to melt, which then just takes all of that, whatever's left and just sort of, you know, it starts flowing into the ecosystem. And we don't know how much of that happens. And they, they find three, don't they? They locate three of the bombs, but one is missing. Willie, no, no, Willie, Willie, it's even worse. You're talking about a different crash. There's another, same thing.

Four bombs over Spain crash. Two of them explode and one goes missing for three months. Oh, God. Okay. And also just a little aside to this, the people that they hire to clean up the nuclear material that has exploded all over Greenland are local Inuits and Danes. And many of them get very, very sick. And it still isn't really transparent about how much irradiation took place. There's a hell of lawsuits. A lot of the people then sue the government.

Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, we're sort of running out of time. So I would like very much to know from you because right now, Denmark is taking quite a stronger line than they ever have. Could you please leave? We'd really like you to leave. Are you not leaving? Okay. There's milk in the fridge if you need it. They are taking a different line now. So in January this year, and as Vistisn, a Danish member of the European Parliament, responded to President Trump saying we're going to buy Greenland. It's going to be ours. With this, dear President Trump, listen very carefully, Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for 800 years. It's an integrated part of our country.

It's not for sale. Let me put it in words you might understand. Mr. Trump, F off, except he used the whole word. So now, in this day and age, why does he want it? Is it a legacy ownership that he's thinking of? Or is there actually a strategic need? Or is it mineral deposits? What is the allure for him right now?

There's two sides. I mean, strategically, it doesn't actually make a lot of sense. And the reason it doesn't make a lot of sense is that the United States still has a base. Like, the United States can do what it wants militarily because it still has a presence, which is now a space for space. And then the last time Trump tried to buy Greenland, Denmark said, look, it's true. We have a lot of rare earth minerals and that are increasingly coming along online because of climate change and they're just easier to get at.

But we've always been willing to sell them to you. Like, you want to buy them? Fine. We'll sell them. You don't need to call on. this entire semi-continent in order to do what you would do anyway, which is by them. But Trump seems to have a kind of 19th century or real estate developer mentality where he's not content with long-term deals with allies. He's like, no, we're going to take the whole thing.

And what do the good people of Greenland who, you know, don't live in Denmark and don't live in the United States? What do they want? All these colonial enterprises operate and work because they imagine this is empty land with no people in it that they can fight over. intake. There were people on it. There are people on it. What do the people of Greenland want? Not to be colonized by the United States is my understanding. Yeah. As we saw when JD Vance turns up and the base knocks on every door in Nook saying, would you like to be visited by J.D. Vance? And everyone, I mean, everyone says, nope, nope, no, no, not today. Thank you. I won't be there. Sorry. I mean, I do think, as much as you don't want to, I do think you're going to have to write something else.

I think it's just... I know. History, first tragedy then farce. Yeah, well, poor Daniel now has his head in his hands. But we're still very, very happy you came to chat about it because it's absolutely fascinating. It's a good story. I mean, it is all that story.

It's kept an incredible story. Absolutely nuts. Daniel Imovar, thank you so much. It's brilliant having you on a program at this because it just makes it all so accessible. In the next episode of this here podcast, we are going to be discussing Canada, another place that's told Donald Trump to F off.

We're working down the shopping list. Exactly. Another place that Donald Trump would like to imbibe as the 51st state of the United States. So we're going to be talking about the imperial history of Canada. Until the next time we meet, though, it is goodbye from me, Anita Arnans.

And goodbye from me, William Drupal.