The last Nazis on Greenland were captured in October 1944, when American soldiers raided a hidden German weather station on the island’s desolate west coast and took dozens of prisoners. Within a year, Germany would be defeated and World War II would be over.

The U.S. military announced aircraft would soon arrive at Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, while stressing it is part of a "long-planned" exercise.

President Trump has exaggerated threats to Greenland from Russia and China and downplayed the country's current defenses, according to local officials and experts on the Arctic.

Negotiators have discussed proposals to check Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic and transfer sovereignty over pockets of Greenlandic land to the United States, an idea opposed by Denmark.

Image A massive iceberg towers over a research or expedition vessel in Greenland's waters. Image courtesy of Hubert Neufeld. From the 2025 story "Beneath Greenland's Ice Lies a Climate Solution — and a New Geopolitical Battleground.

During a speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, President Trump said that he would not use force to take Greenland, an island the State Department says the United States needs to control to counter threats in the surrounding Arctic sea by Russia and China.

Since Russia full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost four years ago, Europe's attention has been firmly fixed on NATO's eastern flank. But could the Arctic become the next area requiring defence and does Bundeswehr have the capacity to take on that role?

Greenland's strategic location makes it a focal point if there were to be a nuclear conflict involving Russia, China and the United States