Wikipedia, that font of all knowledge, has this to say about Spitzbergen during World War II:
"Allied soldiers were stationed on the island in 1941 to prevent Nazi Germany from occupying the islands ... The United Kingdom and Canada sent military forces to the island to destroy installations, mainly Soviet coal mines, and prevent the Germans from occupying it. The German battleship Tirpitz and an escort flotilla shelled and destroyed the Allied weather station there in Operation Sizilien in 1943. On 6 September, a squadron consisting of Tirpitz, the battlecruiser Scharnhorst and nine destroyers weighed anchor in Altenfjord and Kåfjord and headed for Spitsbergen, to attack the Allied base there. At dawn on 8 September 1943 Tirpitz and Scharnhorst opened fire against the two 3-inch guns which comprised the defences of Barentsburg, and the destroyers ran inshore with landing parties. Before noon it was all over. Some prisoners had been taken, a supply dump destroyed, the wireless station wrecked and the landing parties had returned on board."
The Wikipedia entry for Svalbard similarly indicates that the Allies were routed from Svalbard in 1943. A related entry says, "... the Germans occupied one island from 6 September to 9 September 1943, after which they withdrew from this untenable occupation."
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Svalbard and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitsbergen.
Although Germany apparently did not actively occupy the islands, Germany was in a position to deny the Allies access to the islands. For a time the Germans used the islands as locations for weather stations.
In any case one can conclude that Allied merchant ships did not use the islands for logistics, repairs or as a shipping destination, at least not in any organized manner and certainly not after 1943. Presumably there would had to have been some supply operations in support of the Allies up to 1943 but likely not to any major extent.
So that's my inexpert take on what happened in Spitzbergen during World War II.
Ron Carlson, Webmaster
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