Trump Claims the US Returned Greenland to Denmark — But Did It?

By Rikke Lie Halberg

When Nazi Germany began occupying Denmark in April 1940, Greenland suddenly found itself cut off from the colonial power that governed it and thrust into the heart of wartime strategy in the North Atlantic. The United States temporarily assumed responsibility for Greenland’s defense, establishing military bases and defensive infrastructure to prevent Germany from using the island.

More than eighty years later, Donald Trump invoked that moment during his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In a speech on January 21, the former US president claimed that America had “returned Greenland” to Denmark after World War II—implying that this history grants the United States an ongoing right to the territory.

This assertion, however, rests on a selective reading of wartime history and reflects an imperial, colonial mindset toward land, sovereignty, and ownership. To understand why the claim is misleading, it is necessary to trace the agreements that governed Greenland’s status before, during, and after the war.

In 1916, Denmark sold its Caribbean colony, the Danish West Indies, to the United States—territory that later became known as the US Virgin Islands. The same agreement included an explicit American declaration that it would not oppose Denmark’s expansion of its “political and economic interests to include the whole of Greenland.” Thus, while sovereignty over one colony was transferred, Denmark’s sovereignty over another was reaffirmed.

World War II and US strategic needs, however, led to a new arrangement. Denmark and the United States concluded an agreement allowing Washington to assume responsibility for Greenland’s defense. This was formalized in the 1941 Greenland Defense Agreement, drafted by the US State Department and signed by Henrik Kauffmann, Denmark’s envoy in Washington.

The agreement explicitly stated that the US government “fully recognizes Danish sovereignty” over Greenland, adding that the United States—“motivated by the most friendly sentiments toward Denmark”—believed these measures aimed to safeguard the eventual restoration of normal relations between Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark.

In practice, the United States defended Greenland throughout the war, constructing airstrips and military facilities, conducting patrols, and integrating the island into the Allies’ logistical supply network.

In 1945, following the war’s end, Kauffmann sent a diplomatic note to Washington expressing the Danish people’s “great satisfaction” at having the opportunity to contribute to the war effort by placing Danish territory at the disposal of the United States in the fight against the common enemy. He added that Denmark did not wish to receive “any compensation” for the US military’s wartime use of Greenland—framing the cooperation as a voluntary contribution and reaffirming Danish sovereignty.

This wartime arrangement later evolved into a peacetime security relationship. In 1951, after Denmark and the United States became formal allies within the United Nations and NATO, the two countries signed a new defense agreement granting Washington extensive and permanent military rights in Greenland—within the framework of a political alliance.

This period legally entrenched the US presence in Greenland, which had begun as a wartime exception. It included the construction of installations such as Thule Air Base—now known as Pituffik Space Base—which became a cornerstone of US Arctic strategy and remains the only active American base on the island today. Yet the establishment and expansion of the base required the forced relocation of Inuit communities in 1953. Danish courts later acknowledged the injustice of this action, leading to state compensation in 1999.

Colonial Entanglements

These arrangements helped solidify Danish sovereignty over Greenland and enhance the island’s security, but they left the colonial relationship itself largely unexamined. In 1953, amid rising United Nations standards for decolonization, Greenland’s formal colonial status was abolished and the territory was incorporated into the Danish state. This administrative shift allowed Denmark to present its relationship with Greenland as “post-colonial” without engaging in a deeper reckoning with the political, cultural, and economic legacies of colonialism.

Subsequent reforms can be understood as belated attempts to address this unresolved relationship—most notably the introduction of home rule in 1979, which transferred most domestic governance to a Greenlandic parliament, followed by the 2009 Self-Government Act, which strengthened political autonomy and recognized Greenlanders as a distinct people under international law.

Recent developments underscore how new Greenlandic participation in decision-making remains. The presence of Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, in high-level talks in Washington in January marked a clear break from earlier practices, when Greenland’s strategic future was negotiated without Greenlandic representation.

In this context, Trump’s revival of imperial language centered on “ownership” highlights the contrast between lingering colonial ways of thinking and emerging efforts to include Greenlandic political voices in shaping their future. The struggle, then, is no longer solely about the past—but about who has the right to sit at the table when the future is decided.