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IcyPeas

(25,244 posts)
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 06:51 AM 5 hrs ago

Hitler's Greenland Obsession (the Atlantic)

After creating an economic mess with ill-advised tariffs, Hitler looked north in pursuit of resources and national security.

Greenland appears to have been a lifelong preoccupation of Adolf Hitler’s. According to stenographic notes from a lunchtime conversation dated May 21, 1942, Hitler recalled that hardly anyone “interested him more in his youth” than Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who in 1888 led the first team to cross Greenland’s interior.

By April 1934, Hitler’s government had inventoried Greenland: 13,500 Eskimos, 3,500 Danes, and 8,000 sheep, as well as the world’s largest deposit of a strategic natural resource—cryolite, a mineral essential to American aluminum production. In 1938, Hermann Göring dispatched an expedition to Greenland, ostensibly to explore the island’s flora and fauna. However, Hitler’s true intent may have been not scientific, but economic—the expedition was headed by a mining engineer, Kurt Herdemerten, who had been a member of the ill-fated Wegener expedition. Hitler had inflicted countless economic wounds on his country over his five years as chancellor, and this foray into the Arctic was part of a broader effort to remedy one of them.

In a drive to move Germany toward economic self-sufficiency, Hitler had imposed draconian tariffs, refused to honor foreign-debt obligations, and sought to wean the nation off Norwegian whale-oil consumption. The problem was that Germany used whale oil not only for margarine, a staple of the German diet, but also in the production of nitroglycerin, a key component for the munitions industry.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/hitler-greenland/685984/

No paywall:

https://archive.ph/E1o7Q
14 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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NNadir

(37,698 posts)
1. One of the interesting things about cryolite, is that is now essentially an extinct mineral except in museums.
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 07:09 AM
4 hrs ago

Last edited Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:36 AM - Edit history (1)

Cryolite is now made synthetically.

It is often said that the only book the orange pedophile in the White House ever read was Mein Kampf.

The United States occupied Iceland, relieving the British there, and effectively established a light military presence, chiefly for cryolite access as well as meteorological facilities , in Greenland during the Second World War.

I didn't know Hitler was interested in Greenland. Thanks for the interesting note.

niyad

(131,100 posts)
3. Slight correction: not "Mein Kampf", but a collection of hitler's
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 08:53 AM
3 hrs ago

speeches, from which he "borrows" heavily. I knew that Greenland iinsanity did not spring out of the ethers!

NNadir

(37,698 posts)
5. Ok, whatever. I really haven't studied the moron's reading habits all that well. I'm surprised he knows how to read...
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:07 AM
3 hrs ago

...at all, that his father didn't hire a surrogate to take exams for him so he could get out third grade.

niyad

(131,100 posts)
6. Ivana said that he kept the book in his nightstand, and that it was about
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:24 AM
2 hrs ago

the only thing he ever read. Like you, I am surprised he even did that. And, if I remember correctly, a family member did confirm that a surrogate did indeed take his exams.

NNadir

(37,698 posts)
8. It's unsurprising. He is clearly one of the most uneducated Presidents ever to hold the office.
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:31 AM
2 hrs ago

In saying this, I am aware that Abraham Lincoln had no formal education beyond what may have been the third grade, but nonetheless, was among our most educated ever, which came across in 1860 at the Cooper Union address and beyond.

The orange pedophile is a functional illiterate.

niyad

(131,100 posts)
10. Agreed about Lincoln. There is "formal" education, and then self-
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:39 AM
2 hrs ago

education. I thought for years that george w. was the most incurious person to ever occupy the Oval Office, but he is almost functional compared to the orange creature.

NNadir

(37,698 posts)
11. The United States was invented, in my opinion, by an autodidact, Benjamin Franklin.
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:49 AM
2 hrs ago

We all think of the other revolutionaries, but, again, I believe if one looks into it, particularly with reference to his time in England (and the suit he wore when signing the Jay Treaty that he negotiated) without him, there would have been no United States; I consider this country Franklin's greatest invention.

He also had no formal education.

It is of course, a cruel irony that the country Franklin invented is in the process of being destroyed forever by an uneducated, ignorant, rather stupid, criminal dementia case, who cheated his way through an allegedly "formal" education.

After leaving the Constitutional Convention, Franklin was asked what kind of government they had created inside.

He answered, "A Republic, if you can keep it."

We kept for more than two centuries, but we have, to approach a Lincolnian locution, "meanly lost" it.

GoCubsGo

(34,812 posts)
2. It's also really cold and empty.
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 07:31 AM
4 hrs ago

Great for data centers, that take up lots of space, a require expensive cooling in more temperate climates. This is more about Trump getting his hands on it for his tech bro buddies than it is about "minerals."

70sEraVet

(5,398 posts)
7. I hadn't thought of the 'Data Center' angle
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:29 AM
2 hrs ago

I assume that much of the anticipated energy-needs of these centers involve 'cooling', which in itself would likely be a very large demand. I see how Greenland might be strategic.
But Alaska would, I think, serve the same purposes.

Johnny2X2X

(23,923 posts)
4. None of it is coincidence
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:01 AM
3 hrs ago

Trump and the people around him admire Nazism and there are literally thousands of instances now of them copying it. From mottos and slogans, to general policies, to dress and symbols, they have studied Nazism as a guide to how they want to rule.

Texin

(2,848 posts)
12. I rather think a great deal of this obsession is more Stephen Miller's than the old orange shit stain.
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 09:56 AM
2 hrs ago

ColoringFool

(506 posts)
13. Elon's GRANDFATHER Promoted US, CANADA, GREENLAND MERGER IN 1930S!
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 10:02 AM
2 hrs ago

Elon Musk's grandfather is mentioned further into the article.

But this familial connection might explain Trump’s initial rapport with Musk, EVs notwithstanding.

A 1930s movement wanted to merge the US, Canada and Greenland. Here’s why it has modern resonances https://share.google/CHEnBc3z9PpGCvHlL

niyad

(131,100 posts)
14. Would you consider posting this as its own OP for wider visibility?
Mon Feb 23, 2026, 11:34 AM
33 min ago

Thanks in advance.

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