# The Lord of the Rings and World War Two



## Rivendell_librarian (Dec 8, 2020)

I've just listened to this fascinating radio programme putting forward the thesis that Hitler and the Nazis (as the epitome of evil) has become the new moral reference point of our world - and asking what have we lost as a result. The speaker puts forward the idea that, for Tolkien, rather than the LOTR being based on WW2, rather it was what WW2 should have been. Letter 81 may back this idea up where Tolkien, decrying the idea that Germans should be exterminated, writes that "you can't fight the Enemy with his own Ring without turning into an Enemy; but unfortunately Gandalf's wisdom seems long ago to have passed with him into the True West"

Our Sacred Story (Alec Ryrie)


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## Aldarion (Dec 9, 2020)

Tolkien had an idea for War of the Ring long before World War II started, and I believe he actually denied any influence of WWII on his writings. It is certain he found parallels between the two, but that does not mean he was necessarily inspired by it.


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## Rivendell_librarian (Dec 9, 2020)

"What WW2 should have been" is not the same as "inspired by". You could listen to the radio programme for more information if you're really interested in the topic.


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## Aldarion (Dec 9, 2020)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> "What WW2 should have been" is not the same as "inspired by". You could listen to the radio programme for more information if you're really interested in the topic.


I can't because I can't hear audio on the website for whatever reason.


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## Rivendell_librarian (Dec 9, 2020)

The last 10 minutes or so from 40:00 of this talk gives a condensed flavour of the radio programme:

Jesus, Hitler and the Abolition of God


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## Olorgando (Dec 9, 2020)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> I've just listened to this fascinating radio programme putting forward the thesis that Hitler and the Nazis (as the epitome of evil) has become the new moral reference point of our world - and asking what have we lost as a result. The speaker puts forward the idea that, for Tolkien, rather than the LOTR being based on WW2, rather it was what WW2 should have been. Letter 81 may back this idea up where Tolkien, decrying the idea that Germans should be exterminated, writes that "you can't fight the Enemy with his own Ring without turning into an Enemy; but unfortunately Gandalf's wisdom seems long ago to have passed with him into the True West"
> 
> Our Sacred Story (Alec Ryrie)


I was luckier than Aldarion, the whole audio program ran just fine, all 57 minutes (I managed it with just two pauses!).

First, thank you very much for this link. That program was very much worth listening to. 

It is recognizable as being British, which I do not in any way consider a defect, rather the opposite - with its occasional British quirks (in my outside view ).

It does range far beyond WW II as portrayed in (mainly) films and TV, but even in these portrayals, JRRT and LoTR (including PJ's film) certainly do not dominate. Besides briefly mentioning the WW II-era films (of which several of the later ones in my Basil Rathbone - Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes DVD collection are examples), post-WW II films and TV are given more room. As my parents and I came to the US in 1966, I at least have first-hand viewing experience of what was on (often re-runs in syndication) TV there: "Rat Patrol", "12 O'Clock High", "Combat", "Hogan's Heroes" (actually being re-run in one of our smaller private channels here in Germany today!) come to mind, and dozens of films. The latter have continued to today, if more sporadically.

WW II and Hitler's Nazi Germany have the singular monstrosity of the Holocaust. Hitler himself, who exhibits a massive dose of Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil", is not quite so exceptional, his main military opponent for the longest time of the war, Stalin, was about equally murderous, in the 1920's and 1930's, in his case against all sorts of people within the Soviet Union, so a kind of "civil war" genocide against all he considered to be a threat to himself - and as a paranoiac he cast a wide net. (Mao's perhaps equivalent death toll decades later again had other reasons). I did notice, in that interview with Margaret Thatcher, an "Anglo-Saxon" blindness towards the massive contribution of the Soviet Union to Hitler's defeat, paid for in the most massive losses in battle (and to civilians) of the allies - and in the by far highest death toll of German soldiers on any front.

Stalin and the Soviet union led by him are the main reason why for me, any hypothesizing about LoTR as how WW II "should have been fought" breaks down fatally. And with this I mean the hypothesizing by the narrator Alec Ryrie (which he does not pursue very far, to put it mildly, and is right not to do so). Gondor as the UK? The English Channel is a *hugely* more massive obstacle than the Anduin River (and both sides had mechanical "fell beasts" that would have reduced Sauron's thinly disguised pterodactyls to ant food in nothing flat). Rohan as the US? Erm, I would think it would take a couple of Númenors, if not more, to make *this* equation work. Mordor like Nazi Germany? This would have meant that Sauron felt the need to direct the great mass of his forces eastwards, against another evil Maia of comparable power (something that the western allies could not influence - in either case, history or legendarium).

And last, anything but least, LoTR is High Fantasy, (re-) defined it. Where is the equivalent of the One Ring that would have destroyed Hitler (and Mussolini, and Tojo) with one flick of the wrist at the right place, and Gollum?

No, while we now know much about JRRT's sources, it has become equally clear that he definitely did not "cut 'n' paste" them into his writing. He reworked them, and as he did with his own inventions, again and again; and again. WW I gave him much for Mordor and the near surroundings. What WW II gave him is much less clear, as far as I can tell. That it left *no* impression upon his writing is practically impossible, I would think, as he did most of his writing during the time it was fought. But as he was 45 when he began writing, and 57 when he finished (if we take 1949 as the date that happened - the Appendices certainly came later), he certainly did not need the daily newspapers for inspiration for his writing (something even more pronounced with C.S. Lewis). JRRT wrote, in parts, about the (physically present in a supernatural being) utter evil in the Third Age of his legendarium. Hitler was the utter evil of WW II (ironically being mainly fought by a similar evil). That is the meaning of the term "co-incidence", things happening at the same time, even with amazing similarities, but without any causality - something that far too many people find hard to believe; seems to be a genetic defect of our species that *can* be compensated by the use of another thing given us, the most recent, and advanced part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, the main center of thinking. Statistics seem to indicate that it is a part of the body not in danger of deterioration by overuse (say like a knee). And I mean hard-nosed statistics like those of automobile insurers (insurers generally are on the hunt to employ the best statisticians possible: their business depends upon it). There is a threshold age of 25 found in practically all policies (and in other automobile-related topics). Pretty precisely the age that neurologists have found to be that when that prefrontal cortex reaches maturity ...


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## Rivendell_librarian (Dec 10, 2020)

Thanks for taking the time to reply Olorgando.

I don't think Alec Ryrie was pursuing close allegorical parallels in Tolkien's oeuvre and WW2 but obviously WW2 would be a large matter of discussion at the time as witnessed by Tolkien's letter 81 to his son Christopher. So maybe the "inspiration" ran the other way - Tolkien maybe could see that the message in his writings had something to say about WW2 - in this case calls to exterminate all Germans was like fighting Sauron with the Ring and so becoming like Sauron - something Gandalf vehemently did not want to do as we well know. We could do with the wisdom of Gandalf in these days.


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## Olorgando (Dec 10, 2020)

Rivendell_librarian said:


> - Tolkien maybe could see that the message in his writings had something to say about WW2 -


In a word: applicability; and we all know (or should) JRRT's approval of that.

IIRC, what irked him very much was the reading of LoTR as an allegory of WW II that quite a few critics proposed.
Irksome because of, first, his also well-known "cordial dislike" of allegory - always to be tempered by the addition "if used sloppily", which critics all too often were guilty of. But second, on what might be seen as an exclusive focus on WW II, which JRRT very likely felt to be far too constricting.
There is his statement that being caught by war young was as bad in 1914 as it was in 1939. Nor was it any better in any of the wars of human history. He very likely drew on some of these (much) earlier conflicts, involving the Byzantines, Franks, Lombards, Goths, Anglo-Saxons, Norsemen ... and about which lively debate (if not in wide circles) continues about which specific ones did inspire him.

JRRT wrote about human universals, to be found in all places and times. So to focus too exclusively on any one historical event, time, or place is in danger of becoming too narrow-minded, and probably missing things that do not fit into so narrow a focus - to the detriment of one's reading of his books, I would say.


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