What if Stalin had accepted FDR's wartime proposal for a permanent Soviet port in Narvik, Norway?
https://www.jstor.org/stable/259866
During WWII it was President Roosevelt's policy to give the Soviet Union whatever it wanted, and particularly, whatever the U.S. wanted it to have, since the USSR was sustaining 100 times the casualty levels of any of the other allied nations. One of the "presents" offered by FDR to the USSR was a permanent port in Narvik, Norway. This offer was rejected out of hand by the Soviets. Why, exactly?
I suspect that the Soviets really didn't see any great advantage to Narvik over their existing ports in Murmansk and Leningrad. They also saw no reason to further complicate their relationships with Scandanavia in particular and Western Europe in general by imposing unnecessarily on their territory. Contrary to popular opinion, the Russians have no particular obsession with Lebensraum, their desire for territory is functional, limited and pragmatic. No doubt the Soviets would have been delighted, and would readily have accepted control of the Bosphorus and Istanbul, in Turkey, but, even FDR was hardly likely to offer them that!
But let's just suppose, hypothetically, that the Soviets decided to "humor" FDR and accepted the offer of Narvik, Norway. How would this have changed history, if at all? Any thoughts?
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