@thor @SteveTheDragon @popolon
Major ports like Narvik which was the transportation choke for the iron ore of Scandinavia was very important to the Germans so yess they did focus on developing infrastructure in Northern Norway for protecting it.

On the Soviet Union's part in defeating Nazis, yess very very true. There is very simplicity to this that USA was oceans away from both the threats so it's strategy with fighting war was always the way which will give itself the least losses, their focus was rather more on supplying weapons to Britain and France (Business!!)
On the other side, Nazi Germany swiftly chunk over Soviet Union while Stalin was thinking that the peace treaty between the two meant something. Nazi Germany did two mistakes here, first it thought that USSR was almost finished, second it attacked the city named after Stalin. One thing dictators don't like is that their name comes under fire (How did Hitler forget this ). Soviet Union fought to win the war, not to keep the number of deads low so hence it won.