northwest passage, there is a 10-second clip where an american was involved in getting a mineral called cryolife -- cryol and i did not know why they would be doing that, because they were to be neutral during the war, so i want to find out what that was and why americans ended up there, and it storye into a global about the united states and the polar region. host: of course, we were inching into the war in 1941 prior to pearl harbor. there is a significant date, april 9, 1940. why? : april 9, 1940 is the day germany invaded denmark. that left areas up for grabs. basically, after germany invaded denmark, the jurisdiction over -- islands,s iceland, and greenland was in question. they could not occupy greenland because of the monroe doctrine, which stopped to prevent incursions pre-in this matter to roosevelt for a couple of reasons. it was to forestall international actions, but he could also use it domestically to get the american people on his side of the security policies, so that is what he did. he was in a train car on the host: : it is radically. 1949, it was a closed-door colony, so denma