Holzauge
Holzauge was a weather station of the German Wehrmacht, which was built after the occupation of Denmark by the German Reich during World War II. It was located on the island of Greenland, which is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.
Timeline
On 22 August 1942, the fishing steamer Sachsen, which had been converted into a weather observation ship, landed in East Greenland. It was accompanied by a Wehrmacht unit under the command of Leutnant zur See Herrman Richter (1891-1968) and a group of meteorologists under the direction of Gottfried Weiss (1911-unknown). In total, these were 17 men. On a reconnaissance flight one month earlier, Weiss identified the area as the ideal location for a weather station. When he was on site, Ritter selected the Hansa Bay on Sabine Island as a wintering place. The group managed to remain undetected until 11 March 1943. It reported its weather observations to Germany.
On March 13, 1943, members of the Nordøstgrønlands Slædepatrulje discovered them by chance. A gun battle broke out in the course of which the Danish corporal (NCO) Eli Knudsen was fatally wounded. Two members of the patrol were captured. The headquarters of the Eskimonæs sled patrol near the southern tip of the Clavering Island, around 95-kilometers southwest, was partially destroyed on March 25. They later managed to escape, bringing Lieutenant Ritter with them as a prisoner. He spent the remainder of the war in American captivity.
The remaining members of the patrol retrenched to Scoresbysund and reported the location of the German weather station. On May 25, it was attacked and almost completely destroyed by four U.S. bombers stationed on Iceland. The remaining Germans were evacuated on June 6 and June 17.
On March 17, 1943, the German ship Sachsen sunk.
Bibliography
- Wilhelm Dege, William Barr: War North of 80 – The Last German Arctic Weather Station of World War II. University of Calgary Press, 2003, ISBN 1-55238-110-2.
- Anders Odsbjerg: Nordøstgrønlands slædepatrulje 1941–1945. Komma-Verlag, Kopenhagen 1990, ISBN 87-7512-442-4 (Danish).
- Gottfried Weiß: Das arktische Jahr. Eine Überwinterung in Nordostgrönland. Westermann, Braunschweig u. a. 1949 (2. Auflage. Haag und Herchen, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-89228-535-7) (German).
- Jens Fog Jensen, Tilo Krause: Wehrmacht occupations in the new world: archaeological and historical investigations in Northeast Greenland. (PDF; 1.97 MB). In: Polar Record 48, 2012, p. 269–279 doi:10.1017/S0032247411000180