Comment by _4gzn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _4gzn | Hacker News Reader

> The country was ultimately liberated by the Americans in Greenland [...]

Hmm. "On 8 April 1941, the United States occupied Greenland to defend it against a possible invasion by Germany."[1] So, first, there never were any German occupiers to liberate Greenland from, and second, the US occupation of Greenland started 4 years before 1945.

> Furthermore, there were emplacements for massive guns with 42 kilometre range, which could close the strait south of the island to the coast of what is now Poland (then Germany).

First, the strait is 90 kilometres wide.[2] Second, the last German stronghold on the southern coast of the strait, the port of Kolberg (Kołobrzeg) fell to the Polish People's Army on March 18.[3] Calling the coast "then Germany" in May is pretty weird.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Treaty_of_Kiel_to_Wo...

[2] http://visitkolobrzeg.com/bornholm#

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kolberg_(1945)

> Calling the coast "then Germany" in May is pretty weird.

Founded in 1255 by Germans, Kolberg was part of Prussian Pomerania from the 1648 Peace of Westphalia until the August 1945 Potsdam Agreements which implicitly recognised the Soviet capture of eastern Poland and gave Poland eastern Germany in return; this was not finalised until the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. It's perfectly reasonable to refer to Prussian territory in early 1945 as Germany.

(I am not complaining about the transfer to Poland — after the inhumanity of the German occupation of Poland itself it was only just. It does seem a bit unjust that eastern Poland is still part of Russia though!)

Let me rephrase: assigning any military importance to the de jure status of a land is pretty weird.

Such issues featured prominently in the Yalta conference, where the starting point for the discussions and negotiations was the de jure status quo ante. And if Bornholm ws not de jure Danish territory, there would be no issue here (or, at least, a different one - if it had been German, I imagine it might have become part of the DDR.)

The point of mentioning the guns was that whomever controlled the island could limit the ability of ships and submarines to transit to and from the inner Baltic Sea. If you have guns on the coast of Poland and on the island, then it leaves a very narrow set of channel where you can't bombard passing ships.

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