The man who 'gave' Greenland to Roosevelt
April 9, 1940. Denmark is invaded by the Nazis with very little resistance. Hitler allows the legitimate government to remain in office and King Christian X to stay in the country. A puppet government is not formed, but the executive branch is placed under the tutelage and close surveillance of Berlin. In response to these events, in Washington, the career Danish ambassador Henrik Kauffmann (1888-1963) opposes from the outset what he considers a shameful pact with German fascism and decides to act independently of the orders from Copenhagen, where he will eventually be declared a traitor. Kauffmann, whose wife, Charlotte MacDougall (1900-1963), is closely connected to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, remains steadfast and seeks to convince Americans to support his act of rebellion. Initially, even Roosevelt is not convinced. The US initially wants to remain neutral in the war. But the rapid advance of the Nazi army in Europe and the danger of England also falling into their hands changed everything.
It is in this context that Kauffmann and his trusted man within the embassy, Paul Bang-Jensen—an embassy where, moreover, not everyone agreed with him—devised an offer that, after an initial refusal, would ultimately be accepted by the American government. They offered an agreement in the US that would allow the country to defend the neighboring territory of Greenland, under Danish sovereignty, from a possible attack by Nazi Germany by establishing a military base that could also be useful in the defense of England. In return, Kauffmann would have the protection of Washington and access to the Danish gold deposited in the United States before the war, money with which he would finance the maintenance of his embassy and the others that had joined his act of resistance.
The agreement, negotiated in secret, was reached on April 9, 1941, exactly one year after Hitler's invasion of Denmark, and was signed by Kauffmann himself, acting as his country's representative, and US Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who would later be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. The agreement, which was also ratified by President Roosevelt, was declared null and void by the Danish government, but the signatories overturned it, and it remained in effect after the war. Kauffmann, received as a hero in Copenhagen, was appointed Minister without Portfolio in his country's government, continued as ambassador to San Francisco, and represented the US at the United Nations. Since then, the US has maintained a strategic military presence in Greenland. Of course, neither the motives, nor the methods, nor the tragic circumstances in which Kauffmann or Cordell Hull acted have anything to do with Trump's crudeness and aggressive frivolity.
Kauffmann's personal story has a sad epilogue. It had a dramatic ending that the film exploits. The good traitor (2020). Available on Filmin. In 1963, while suffering from cancer, his wife, consumed by jealousy over his affection for her sister, stabbed him in bed and then committed suicide by stabbing herself in the bathtub.
There's yet another tragedy. A few years earlier, the young diplomat who had assisted Kauffmann, Paul Bang-Jensen, also died under mysterious circumstances in New York after refusing to hand over a list of eighty-one people implicated in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution to his superiors at the UN, fearing the information would be leaked to the USSR. In 1959, he was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head and a pistol in his hand. The FBI ruled the case a suicide. But before his death, he had sent a letter to his wife with this warning: "Under no circumstances would I commit suicide. This would be contrary to my entire nature and my religious convictions."
