PLAY PODCASTS
America’s Cold War Obsession with Greenland
Season 6 · Episode 1

America’s Cold War Obsession with Greenland

Season Premiere!

HISTORY This Week · The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

April 28, 202532m 41s

Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (pdst.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.

Show Notes

April 27, 1951. The United States has been putting pressure on Denmark for a long time. Because the small European kingdom has something the Americans really, really want: Greenland. 

Today, they sign a treaty that will basically let the U.S. military build whatever it wants on this frozen island. They end up constructing an air base, but then turn to a much more ambitious project, underground.

How does this hidden Arctic outpost connect to a massive nuclear secret? And why do the Americans abandon this city beneath the ice?


Special thanks to Paul Bierman, professor at the University of Vermont’s School of the Environment and Natural Resources and author of When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth's Tumultuous History and Perilous Future; Kristian Nielsen, associate professor in science history at Aarhus University in Denmark and co-author of Camp Century: The Untold Story of America's Secret Arctic Military Base Under the Greenland Ice; and Robert Weiss, former US Army doctor and ​​Donald Guthrie Professor of Urology at Yale University’s School of Medicine.

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices