THE letter writer who uses the pen name "The Shadow Knows" (Mid-Ocean News, January 20) claims that I have not told the full story of the circumstances that led to the Americans setting up military bases here during World War Two. But, in fact, that was never my intention. I was merely expressing my opinions on the possible consequences of hosting US military forces here during the Cold War stand-off between America and the Soviet Union.

He goes on to refer to the possibility of German U-boats attacking Bermuda and even a possible German occupation during World War Two that might possibly have been deterred by the presence of American submarines here prior to the beginning of construction on the American bases.

I will concede that point.

However, let me pose the following question. What possible damage could deck guns on the Nazi U-boats have done to Bermuda apart from some shelling along the shoreline? In fact, if such an unlikely attack had ever occurred then the British would have reinforced the gun battery units already set up in Bermuda. Such shore-based defences would have represented a mortal threat to any U-boat commander tempted to launch an attack on Bermuda while surfaced.

And why would the Germans have wanted to invade Bermuda during World War Two? I disagree that Bermuda at any time was in danger of a German invasion during World War Two. I do so for three reasons.

First Bermuda's strategic value to the Germans was minimal, even if they had the capability to seize the island — which they did not. Unlike the Japanese, the Germans did not build aircraft carriers which would have allowed them to mount long-range attacks from the sea. Bermuda had nothing of value, no large land area, no factories or large tracks of farming land, no oil or other natural resources that would have helped the German war effort.

The second factor is that the Royal Navy retained command of the seas during World War Two. Early in the war there was a threat from German surface raiders such as the battleships Graf Spee and the Bismarck. But the Bismarck was sunk by the British in 1941 and the Graf Spee was scuttled by its own crew on the River Plate in 1939 when it could not escape from being boxed-in by the British Navy. Only the Nazi U-boats could mount long-range attacks on Allied shipping — at least until the tide finally turned in the Battle of the Atlantic.

The final factor precluding a German invasion of Bermuda is the fact the Nazis failed to invade Britain. The Battle of Britain in 1940, the aerial confrontation between the Luftwaffe and the Royal Air Force, was lost by the Germans. WITHOUT control of the skies over Britain, there was no possibility of the Germans launching a sea-borne invasion of the British Isles — an invading armada would have been devastated by British air power. Now, if the Germans had succeeded in crossing the English Channel and conquering Britain, Bermuda would almost certainly have become one of the westernmost outposts in the Nazi Empire. If the Germans could have established fuel depots here — fuel depots they were able to re-supply without any threat from the British Navy — then Bermuda would have made an ideal forward operating base for its U-boat fleet.

North America would, of course, have been the next Nazi target. Would America have come to Bermuda's aid? I doubt it. I think the US would have abandoned the idea of holding on to a ring of military outposts extending in an arc from Canada to the Caribbean and simply retreated into a Fortress America-style situation.

Washington would have been more concerned about the possibility of Nazi penetration of Mexico — which Hitler was enthusiastic about — and subsequent military action along the southern border, possibly in conjunction with a major Japanese attack along the US West Coast.

If such a scenario had come to pass, Bermuda would have been a casualty of war — a tiny Nazi enclave with a Swastika-emblazoned ensign fluttering from the Flagpole — at least until the US repelled the Axis (assuming they managed to repel the combined might of the German and Japanese forces, not necessarily a given).

Anyway, this is all a detour into the realm of speculation. What I would really like to discuss is the aftermath of World War Two and the Cold War period when Bermuda was in real and imminent danger of nuclear annihilation from the 1960s onwards. I have often stated that Bermuda benefited — and benefited handsomely — from the establishment of an American military infrastructure here beginning in 1940/41.

I am neither ungrateful nor unrealistic when it comes to the positives that accrued to Bermuda throughout the period that the US military was here. However, as I have also pointed out time and again, Bermuda was at real risk throughout the Cold War period — and as someone who subscribes to the old Peace movement concept of "No Annihilation Without Representation", I will reiterate that Bermuda never had a say in what the US and UK decided our role should be in America's Cold War nuclear strategy.

"The Shadow Knows" states that Bermuda's use as a base for American Anti-Submarine Warfare during the Cold War is the price we had to pay for freedom. Well, whose freedom are we talking about? Because I do not accept that my country could have been destroyed as a result of being assigned the role of trip wire for the defence of America's East Coast.

If the Cold War had turned hot and I was a Soviet admiral with responsibility to command and keep intact a submarine fleet that had the mission to attack the East Coast of the United States, I would not allow the US to operate an airfield with P-3 Orions being used to hunt those self-same subs.

The P-3 Orions that flew out of Bermuda are maritime patrol aircraft which, used in conjunction with the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and its own sonobuoys, can hunt down and attack enemy submarines with nuclear depth charges but, most likely, with homing torpedoes.

In the event of hostilities breaking out between the US and the Soviets, Bermuda's role as a combatant would probably have lasted for only a few hours. Nuclear missiles would have rained down on the American bases — and the rest of us. And that remains my argument — whose freedom were we really protecting and why should my country have been placed in jeopardy?I WOULD like to briefly respond to two other letter writers, Ras Judah and the citizen of Eritrea Berhane Araya. I should think that the comments of Berhana Araya were a revelation to Ras Judah concerning the politics and history of Ethiopia. I was aware for a long time about the struggle of the Eritrean people against Ethiopian rule, at one time Africa's longest liberation war. Unfortunately, this liberation struggle did not get the same degree of support or awareness as other liberation struggles in Africa.

Interestingly at one time Cuba did support of the Eritrean people with material aid and even advisers but abandoned that support to help prop up the neo-Marxist government of Ethiopia just as the then Soviet Union dumped its support of Somalia, which was once it's client state in the Horn of Africa.

So Mr. Berharne and I have no disagreement — the Cold War often made such local conflicts worse than they would have been if the two superpowers had stayed out. It is a fact that the so-called Cold War was anything but that in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world.

As for Ras Judah, he needs to do some more reading and studying of the world in which we live because often what we believe to be truth is not the truth.