Greenland was a closed colony of Denmark from 1721 until after the Second World War, meaning that no outsiders were allowed into the country except for Danish colonizers and their designated visitors. This was a suffocating policy for Kalaallit, but it gave exclusive access to Danish missionaries and resource developers. Denmark, for example, had a monopoly on the extraction of minerals such as cryolite, which was key to the production of aluminum used in military weapons and brought in billions of dollars in profit.

During the Second World War, Greenland became a strategic asset for another reason: the weather there helped predict the weather in Europe, which in turn could shape military strategy. Allied forces sought to prevent the Germans from establishing weather bases on the island or from gaining access to meteorological intelligence. Even before the US entered the war, it patrolled Arctic waters, particularly along the coast of Greenland, to monitor German military activity. Denmark was by then occupied by Nazi Germany; if the Allied powers hadn’t utilized Greenland to their advantage, the Nazis might have taken over there as well. As such, Greenland briefly became a US protectorate.