Thursday September 11, 1941. The Buskø Affair.

The USCG Northland stopped the Norwegian sealer SS Buskø off of the coast of Greenland, impounded the ship, and arrested the crew.

Northland under sail, which was not the way it typically sailed.

Stopping a Norwegian ship?

Well, yes. . . 

Ownership of Greenland had been contested between the Scandinavian countries of Denmark and Norway prior to World War Two, with its status as a Danish possession finally resolved by way of a decision of the International Court of Justice in 1933.  After German occupation, the Quisling administration in Norway saw an opportunity to reverse this situation and sought to take advantage of German sponsorship and the fact that the Royal Navy was precluding Norwegian ships from resupplying small Norwegian hunting, meteorological, and radio stations that remained on Greenland. The Quisling government was urged in this direction by Adolf Hoel, a geologist with nationalist leanings, and Gustav Smedal, a lawyer with the same.

 In 1941, with German permission, the Norwegian government outfitted a party to essentially reclaim Norwegian control of Greenland, led by a Norwegian arctic explorer who had led a prior Norwegian expedition in 1931 for the same purpose.  Complicating it further, the Royal Navy's actions were putting Norwegian parties on Greenland in desperate straights, as they were not getting resupplied.

Just before the expedition set out, the Germans insisted that a radio operator, by the unlikely name of Jacob (Iacob) Bradley, but made part of the expedition with the purpose of setting up a German radio station.  The ship's captain protested the action as this crossed over a line in their view. While the mission of the ship was somewhat ambiguous, it was still Norwegian, up until that point.

Bradley, moreover, was a Norwegian Nazi, with ties to the Nazi organization in Norway that predated the war, although he'd ironically separated from it formally prior to the German invasion.

German insistence meant that Bradley was incorporated into the party against the ship's wishes.  He was dropped off at one of the Norwegian camps on September 2, but oddly didn't begin to broadcast anything.  He may never have set up the radio equipment.  The Norwegian trappers he was placed with refused to help him assemble his equipment, for that matter, apparently voting on his mission with inaction.

Several months prior Danish government had signed a treaty with the US seeking to have the US protect Greenland during the war.   This was well within the US's traditional Monroe Doctrine set of prerogatives.  

Upon reaching Greenland's water, Danish communities immediately noticed the ship and reported it to American authorities.  On this date in 1941 the USCG Northland raided it.  Bradley's camp was also raided, and his equipment destroyed. The ship was towed to Boston Harbor.

Bradley was arrested in the United States and held until 1947.  After the war he did not return to Norway until 1979, at which point the statute of limitations had expired on potential treason charges.  He was buried in a Jewish cemetery at the time of his death, as ironically his wife was Jewish.

Hallvard Devold, the Norwegian leader of the 1931 and 1941 expeditions, was turned over to the British who held him until the end of the war, upon which he returned to Norway.  Norwegian authorities did not prosecute him.  Hoel denied all knowledge of the Germans having co-opted the expedition, but he paid for his sympathy with Quisling by losing his academic and institutional positions after the war.

The SS Buskø was released by the United States in 1942 and leased by the Norwegian government in exile to the United States. After the war she was refitted, and already in 1941, upon her being seized by the Coast Guard, her condition had been noted as very dilapidated.  She sank in a terrible storm in 1950 which took several ships in sealing grounds, claiming their crews as well.

More on these events can be read here:

“A cursed affair”—how a Norwegian expedition to Greenland became the USA’s first maritime capture in World War II

Today in World War II History—September 12, 1941

Also involving the Quisling government, on this day that body banned the Boy Scouts and compelled its members to join the Nasjonal Samling's youth leagues, the equivalent of the Hitler Youth in Norway.

A German spokesman, on this day, declared that President Roosevelt "wanted war" while an Italian one declared that American actions required Axis ships to attack American naval vessels on sight.

The White House noted that there was a lot of similarity between Charles Lindbergh's recent comments in Des Moines, Iowa, and Nazi propaganda.  Lindbergh's recent remarks had been very poorly received by the American public.

And the Horsa glider, the large British gilder for airborne operations, flew for the first time.

British newspapers ran an interesting cartoon depicting Hitler's advance in Russia against Napoleon's, which had started within two days of each other in 1812 and 1941 respectively.

It noted that by this time in 1812, Napoleon had advanced further towards Moscow than Hitler, but it did also note that the French Empire (whose troops at that time included large numbers of conscripted Germans) had advanced with a single thrust rather than along a 1200-mile front, as Hitler's troops were doing.