Mordor inspired by Nazi Germany?

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by rorschach

I think that the whole ethos and historical sensibility of the book does point to one period in particular - the lowest point of Saxon fortunes during the Viking invasions in the late 9th century, specifically after the battle of Chippenham (878) where Alfred of Wessex was defeated and his army scattered.

Tolkien WAS a huge Saxon fan, so I find this theory plausible. I doubt there was any direct connection in his imagination, but he was certainly drawing on what he was most familiar with - i.e. Anglo-Saxon history, among other things.

[rorschach]

Thank you both for replying, and I fully agree with 'so far as it goes' Burrahobbit. A work as wide-ranging and complicated as LOTR badly needed a coherent geo-political framework, and it's not surprising that, consciously or unconsciously, JRRT settled on one that so closely matches a historical situation from a period he happened to be a world authority on - so far, so obvious.

A good reason to set out these historical parallels is a continuing sadness (which JRRT surely shared) about how little people know of this history. If you don't know the events of Alfred the Great's reign, please, please do read up on them. This was a key turning point in not just English but world history, and it's also a great STORY. From the despair of defeat to the eventual recovery and victory is an emotional rollercoaster on a par with LOTR itself, and these things actually happened...

A related issue of great interest is the creative process which led to LOTR. Say you decided to write an epic fantasy saga. You want the prevailing mood to be one of a titanic clash of civilisations, with one side apparently doomed to inevitable destruction, and the annihilation of not just the people but their whole history and culture. How would you research the mindset of the outnumbered and threatened side?

From a European perspective you might start with writers from the end of the Western Roman Empire facing barbarian invasion, or perhaps the fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 (which incidently has strong parallels to the mood inside Minas Tirith during the siege). More recently, the impact of european colonial expansion on native cultures was just as catastrophic, but apart from Native American accounts there are few written sources (US readers might be somewhat surprised, not to say offended, to hear the rush to the Pacific Coast so described, but in world-historical terms that's exactly what it was). Finally, and in a category all of it's own (and not available to JRRT) is Holocaust Literature.

JRRT probably didn't do any overt research in this way, but then he didn't have to. Want to know what the end of the World feels like? Try reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles for the 860's and 870's. A lifetime of reading these accounts both professionally and for his own pleasure meant that they could hardly fail to permeate into JRRT's world view. This is the main reason for my view that LOTR could have been written at almost any time after the Victorian Era (when concerns about the effects of industrialisation and the mechanisation of the coutryside were already widely expressed) and the advent of WWII is irrelevant. At any time doesn't mean by anyone however - the perculiar nature of JRRT's genius is what keeps us all reading his astonishing books.

Finally, and in a Loki-like spirit of mischief, I can't resist pointing out the ultimate parallel between Alfredian history and LOTR.

The Ring: something taken into the heart of the enemy's camp, which effectively neutralises the threat from that enemy.
= Christianity itself. The conversion of the Danish commanders after Ashdown as a condition of the Peace Treaty removes the immediate threat to Wessex, allowing time for consolidation and recovery, whilst simultaneously undermining morale and coherence among the Danes.

No wonder Frodo is seen by so many commentators as a Christ-like figure. It's not the Ring he's taking into Mordor, but the Gospel itself, which he delivers to spectacular effect in his own Sermon on the Mount (Doom).

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

Tolkien WAS a huge Saxon fan, so I find this theory plausible. I doubt there was any direct connection in his imagination, but he was certainly drawing on what he was most familiar with - i.e. Anglo-Saxon history, among other things.

Gwath, you've given me a chuckle there. I've got this image now of Tolkien donning a leather biker jacket and headbanging to Wheels Of Steel by Barnsley's finest metal band.

Originally Posted by rorscach

The Baddies: Dark destructive power based in the south and east, determined to destroy the power of Gondor and apparently invincible. = the Danish Vikings who've already destroyed Northumbria and look set to complete the job against Wessex. Utterly evil (i.e. pagan, non-Christian). Centre of power is Mordor =London (note the similarity of the words). Nothing changes, I'm from Yorkshire and I still think of London as the root of all evil. Colour is black = Vikings are commonly associated with this colour, from the black raven standard to the normal dress of Guthrum, the Viking commander at Chippenham.

Well the Vikings were not 'evil' for one, they were a highly advanced culture, and Tolkien was very fond of them, as shown by his love of the Icelandic sagas and all the rest of the mythology and history of that people. I think rather his ire would be against the French to be honest, and if any parallel could be drawn I think he'd pinpoint the destruction of English culture at 1066.

Plus Tolkien's work is packed full of Scandinavian imagery.

I agree about London though. Nice one.

[rorschach]

Actually I think the Mordor/London analogy holds up well in any case. JRRT was unashamedly provincial in outlook, and there's evidence for his distrust of the centralising tendencies of Whitehall bureaucracy, with all that that implied for loss of cultural identity in other regions of England. This fear of being taken over, of being 'swamped' may strike a chord with, for example, the average American or French view of Washington or Paris respectively - part of the reason for LOTR's continuing popularity perhaps?

Were the Danes 'evil'? I don't think so either (and nor did JRRT as you say), but nor were they the cuddly bunnies of modern revisionism. They undoubtedly had a nice line in 'shock and awe' tactics, but then as the old proverb says 'You can't make an omelette without killing several million Russians' .. Their contemporary Christian opponents certainly depicted them as evil - 'The Scourge of God' no less - but then they would, wouldn't they?

It doesn't make any difference to my identification of the historical situation in Alfred's time with the basic geopolitical structure of LOTR. There is no allegory here. LOTR is a fantasy: Gondor is NOT Wessex, Aragorn's story is NOT the same as Alfred the Great's, and as has been forcefully pointed out on other threads Orcs are NOT Vikings.

It seems absurd to accuse JRRT of a lack of imagination, but it's rather unfortunate that he ended up with this particular geography for Middle Earth. He could have placed his 'evil force of destruction' at any point of the compass he chose, but by putting it in the east and south he appears to put LOTR firmly into the whole history of threats to Western European civilisation from that quarter - from the Goths and Huns, Arabs, Mongols, Turks et al right down to Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. This has been a gift to allegory-hunters ever since the book was written.

Note that the Silmarillion never seems to get plagued by these kinds of historical analogies, for the good reason that the forces of evil are stuck up in the far north. A Chinese or Indian reader might feel the cultural resonance of a northern invasion (after the Mongol and Mughal invasions respectively), but it's not easy to come up with a european parallel. The clearest ones I can think of - a northern force bringing physical destruction and cultural annihilation to an artistically advanced, culturally, racially and politically diverse south - would be the Albigensian Crusade against southern France in the mid13th century, or it's Iberian contemporary the Reconquista of Christian Spain against the Moors. JRRT would have hated both these comparisons, of course, since they cast Catholic Christianity in the role of Morgoth.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

As I so often do, I think that some passages from the letters might be helpful here, especially since they support several of the points made above.

Originally Posted by JRRT

The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris in his Huns and Romans, as in 'The House of the Wolfings' or 'The Roots of the Mountains'.

Letters no. 226 (31 December 1960)

My problem with allegory, even such a diverting allegory as the Wessex connection, is that it trammels L.R., obscuring its meaning behind false real-world analogies. Allegory has been the great literary disease of the last century, probably because it allows the reader to feel that he has been allowed into a cosy little secret. The vulgar and untutored might see, for example, a simple beast fable about animals running a farm, but of course the educated and superior critic knows that Orwell is talking about the Russian revolution. It allows the reader who possesses a modicum of sense to feel that he has cracked a code and revealed secrets hidden to lesser minds.

This, of course, has presented a lot of problems to authors of fantasy. It's no coincidence that E.R. Eddison's foreword to The Worm Ouroboros begins "It is neither allegory nor fable but a Story to be read for its own sake," while Tolkien's preface to the 1966 second edition of L.R. contains a long rebuttal of its status as an allegory on recent events that already accounts for every fifth word ever posted in this forum. There is, however, a good reason for the determination of their denials: to find allegory in either author's work is to misunderstand fundamentally the nature of the work, and - in Tolkien's case at least - his entire outlook on life, fiction and his country's enemies.

Tolkien made a number of comments on the Second World War in his letters, many of them directly relating to Germany, and his attitude is a telling one. Perhaps, though, it is best to begin with his famous letter to the German publishing house Rütten and Loening Verlag, of 1938.

Originally Posted by JRRT

My great, great grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject - which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort [i.e. whether Tolkien had any Jewish ancestry] are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

Letters no. 30, 25th July 1938

Tolkien, then, was well-disposed towards Germany as a country, and like any reasonably intelligent person he was able to distinguish between a country and the party that happens to be leading it. It is difficult to imagine someone actually liking Mordor as a place or an idea, at least the parts of it through which Frodo and Sam pass in L.R., because Mordor is almost a physical manifestation of Sauron's will to corrupt and destroy: a land utterly blasted and ruined. On the other hand, some parts of 1940s Germany were really quite nice and remain so.

After five years of destructive warfare, Tolkien's opinion remained basically unchanged. While deploring the excesses and methods of the axis powers, he continued to detest the individuals responsible for them, not the entire nation.

Originally Posted by JRRT

Urukhai is only a figure of speech. There are no genuine Uruks, that is folk made bad by the intention of their maker; and not many who are so corrupted as to be irredeemable (though I fear it must be admitted that there are human creatures that seem irredeemable short of a special miracle, and that there are probably abnormally many of such creatures in Deutschland and Nippon - but certainly these unhappy countries have no monopoly: I have met them, or thought so, in England's green and pleasant land).

Letters no. 78 (12 August 1944)

Tolkien's distaste for jingoism is again apparent in a letter of 1944.

Originally Posted by JRRT

We knew Hitler was a vulgar and ignorant little cad, in addition to any other defects (or the source of them); but there seem to be many v. and i. l. cads who don't speak German, and who given the same chance would show most of the other Hitlerian characteristics. There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done. Of course there is still a difference here. The article was answered and the answer printed. The Vulgar and Ignorant Cad is not yet a boss with power; but he is a very great deal closer to becoming one in this green and pleasant isle than he was.

Letters no. 81 (23-25th September 1944)

As the fall of Berlin neared, with Russian tanks sixty miles from the city, Tolkien was again disgusted with the bloodthirsty popular opinion in his own country.

Originally Posted by JRRT

Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seem no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination left in this dark diabolic hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation, mainly (not solely) created by Germany, be necessary and inevitable. But why gloat! We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilisation in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes.

Letters no. 96 (30th Jan. 1945)

This is scarcely the sort of language that one would expect Tolkien to use about the fall of Mordor, particularly since he doesn't. This is because although in his books the antagonist is virtually a personification of evil, Tolkien lived in the real world, and people are not like that. Hitler, for example, as well as inspiring and ordering the deaths of millions, plunging the world into a brutally destructive war and utterly wrecking Germany, was a dog-loving, vegetarian teetotaller and decorated war hero, who might have led quite an unremarkable life had he not entered politics. Tolkien appears to have regarded him with contempt; not the awe that Sauron inspires.

Basically, then, not only was Tolkien too subtle a writer to hammer home points about contemporary politics in the form of a rather clumsy allegory, but the very points which he is often supposed to have been making do not support his own expressed opinions. This is why he devoted so many words to refuting the World War II allegory: because it presented to the world an utterly false view of his views and (more importantly in his eyes) the character of his work.

Now for some fun.

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I think the only aspect of LotR that you could argue was influenced directly by WWII was the creation of the Fell Beasts (good call, Rumil). I believe there is something in one of the letters about this, about how Tolkien was horrified by airborne warfare - and I understand he was not wholly happy about Christopher being an RAF man, either.

I found that one too.

Originally Posted by JRRT

It would not be easy for me to express to you my loathing for the Third Service - which can be nonetheless, and is for me, combined with admiration, gratitude and above all pity for the young men caught in it. But it is the aeroplane of war that is the real villain. And nothing can really amend my grief that you, my best beloved, have any connexion with it. My sentiments are more or less those that Frodo would have had if he discovered some Hobbits learning to ride Nazgûl-birds, 'for the liberation of the Shire'. Though in this case, as I know nothing about British or American imperialism in the Far East that does not fill me with regret and disgust, I am afraid I am not even supported by a glimmer of patriotism in this remaining war. [The war in the Far East, which continued until August 1945]

Letters no. 100 (29th May 1945)

I was also interested in rorschach's points about the geographical location of Mordor. There is actually a parallel that is both medieval and Christian, and which supports Tolkien's assertion that the south-eastern siting of the Black Land was a geographical necessity. As John F. Vickrey points out in 'The Vision of Eve in Genesis B' (Speculum 44 (1969)), in the Anglo-Saxon poem Christ III, the appearance of Christ on judgement day is to be from the south-east (ll. 899-904), and the poem follows numerous literary parallels that associate God with the south-east and the devil with the north-west (this could be the reason for Tolkien's placement of Morgoth's great fastnesses in northern regions). In Lactantius's Divinae Institutiones, II, 9, God is also associated with the east and south, in this case at the creation. Vickrey follows Thomas Hill in tracing these associations to St. Jerome's commentary on Zacharias xiv 4-5.

Tolkien would have been familiar at the very least with the advent of Christ in Christ III and may have read any number of works by St. Jerome, so it may be that he was aware of this, which supports his contention that if one sets one's action in the north-west of the known world (the region occupied by Anglo-Saxon England), one cannot avoid having one's main antagonists attack from south and east. If I were given to the seeking of allegory, I might suggest that it was, in fact, deliberate, and that Tolkien was upset with God during the entire writing of L.R., but of course that would be ridiculous.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by rorschach

Hi Folks
This is probably old hat to all old-time Tolkein fans, but I've never understood all the WWII allegory stuff. Tolkein was a professor of medieval languages, steeped in the history of Dark Age England. From that, can we identify a corresponding point in time in English history where LOTR 'takes place'?

I can't speak of the others but I'm surely an old time Tolkien fan and have never bothered to try and find out the parallels into the medieval history of the British isles. Well, I have neither been a fan enough to study anything on Tolkien - like to read different commentaries or other speculation on his works - or his letters even!

But I must admit this viewpoint is at the same time plausible, believable and understandable - and it would explain why the prof. was so annoyed by the questions concerning the WW2.

But we should also remember that even if the things from the past of England you suggest rorschach might have been the initial historical sceneries that inspired Tolkien we're still needing to answer at least two questions:

How did his experiences of both World Wars come into the picture? I mean even if one starts with a storyline or a basic concept unrelated to the present day occurences those might (and would?) influence the initial idea and the creative process going on after those events. And granting that, one should ask what is the importance of those newer experiences and their relation to the possible original idea?

Secondly: Is there a deeper annoyance with the paralles with the history / legend of the real world occurences at stake here? As no scholar on the topic it still seems to me that Tolkien was really annoyed by such suggestions. So what is the worth of such discoveries for interpreting his work? Should we follow him in the stance that we should search for no parallels or allegories of actual history and that the ME and the LotR are just mythology (for England), or should we read it through historical lenses - and what would we gain or lose by doing that?

(I'm admitting that as a lay history-freak I immediately felt a need to look back on some history-books to check these suggestions out - and I probably will do it soon enough as I have time for it - but that's a freak like me...)

EDIT: X'd with the letters of the Squatter...

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

I was also interested in rorschach's points about the geographical location of Mordor. There is actually a parallel that is both medieval and Christian, and which supports Tolkien's assertion that the south-eastern siting of the Black Land was a geographical necessity.

Looking at the European civilisations it's pretty easy to see that the threats came (come!!!) from east and south whether they were (are) persians, carthagenians, huns, slavs, ottomans, arabs...

It's the basic story of the West. And wasn't Tolkien writing a mythology eg. the "basic story"?

[Morthoron]

I don't think Tolkien's story is at all analogous with specific eras of real history. For every comparative point to real events and his chronology, there are wholly divergent themes occurring simultaneously with those that many commentators claim as allegorical.

It is better to say that the compendium is a masterful amalgam of Tolkien's studies and interest, a synthesis linguistic in intent, that covers a wide spectrum of biblical and mythological allusions (Antedeluvian, Atalantan, Miltonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Graeco-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, etc.), and is both anachronistic and archaic simultaneously. How else can one explain the advent of gunpowder in the West occurring simultaneously with an almost total reliance on chain mail (with only a single mention of a crossbow or arbelist-like weapon), and the mentions of clocks, newspapers, new world imports and trains in a 16th or 17th century squirearchy in the Shire alongside a pre-feudal kingship such as in Rohan?

Tolkien's vast conglomeration defies allegorical interpretation unless one wishes to parse out the prose into tiny bits. Reading Tolkien's letters, it is clear that even he was often mystified by his own work, saying one thing imperatively early on, then drastically changing his view decades later. He even plops in a character like Tom Bombadil, who any rational reader can plainly see does not fit neatly into any Middle-earth categorization whatsoever, but is placed there because Tolkien liked the character and felt his presence was important (cosmological questions be damned).

One can no more equate Alfredian Wessex with the story than one can try to compare the Ring with the atomic bomb, neither can one present Mordor as Nazi Germany in a cogent manner any more than you can imply that Gondor, or its precedent Numenor, was built on the foundations of Constantinople. People have tried, but in the end it never adds up to a completely consistent theory. There are resemblances, there are facsimiles, there are hints, but there are never one-to-one comparative ratios. That is the mark of true genius, and obviously the reason we will be arguing this same topic into the ground well after the dead horse has been beaten into bits so tiny that we will be sparring over equine molecules.

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Looking at the European civilisations it's pretty easy to see that the threats came (come!!!) from east and south whether they were (are) persians, carthagenians, huns, slavs, ottomans, arabs...

It's the basic story of the West. And wasn't Tolkien writing a mythology eg. the "basic story"?

Some of the most significant, defining threats to the western world have come from the north, as seen by the invaded states. The Romans had the Goths, Vandals, and Huns, Charlemagne had his nemeses the Saxons, and everybody suffered under the ubiquitous Vikings.

I agree about those other invasions though, the Muslims in particular.

[davem]

Actually, Tolkien's inspiration for LotR was the Wars of the Roses - Aragorn was clearly modelled on Richard III - even down to the broken sword:

.

Elrond is therefore Warwick, the Kingmaker, whose daughter Aragorn goes on to wed....

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

The War of the Ring does not emulate WWII in the least, per the author. If anything, the battle and horror in the story reflect Tolkien's recollections of WWI

Much agreed.

Towards the end of Summer, I came across a brown patch on one of the backyard stepping stones. Upon closer examination, I saw that it was composed of ants - some alive, but most of them dead. What struck me was the shear number of ants, as they collectively made an area about the size of a circle with a radius of about 6 inches.

As I live in a temperate zone, these are not huge Amazonian army ants that are the size of small dogs. No, these were the typical brown-colored carpenter ants (I surmised, as I don't even pretend to be an entomologist) native to the region.

The swarm was again sizable, but again they were mostly dead. I couldn't see any signs of their demise - no chemical residue, no child-sized foot prints, no magnifying glass burns. Just dead ants.

Out came the hose. Whatever it was with the ants, they - the living and the dead - were washed away, and now that we're into Fall, are long forgotten.

***

At least sixteen million people died as a result of WWI, the war that J.R.R. Tolkien experienced. Here's how some of his contemporaries saw that time (all quotes and poems taken from Martin Gilbert's The First World War):

Originally Posted by Captain Spears

In the splendor of conquest, or at rest, troops could try to forget realities of the battlefield, but for those who were at the Front, or even near the front as it moved swiftly forward, a new, harsh world was beginning to impinge upon the accepted conventions of armies at war. For Captain Spears, who had been with the French Fifth Army for the previous two weeks, that moment came on August 20, as he sat on a hill with a French officer overlooking the fields, towns and villages of the Sambre valley south of Charleroi. 'A dog was barking at some sheep. A girl was singing as she walked down the lane behind us. From a little farm away on the right came the voices and laughter of some soldiers cooking their evening meal. Darkness grew in the far distance as the light began to fail. Then, without a moment's warning, with a suddenness that made us start and strain our eyes to see what our minds could not realise, we saw the whole horizon burst into flame.'

'A chill of horror came over us. War seemed suddenly to have assumed a merciless, ruthless aspect that we had not realized till then. Hitherto it had been war as we had conceived it, hard blows, straight dealing, but now for the first time we felt as if some horrible Thing, utterly merciless, was advancing to grip us.'

Originally Posted by A.P Herbert

This is the Fourth of June

Think not that I never dream

The noise of that infernal noon,

The stretchers' endless stream,

The tales of triumph won,

The night that found them lies,

The wounded wailing in the sun,

The dead, the dust, the flies.

The flies! oh God, the flies

That soiled the sacred dead,

To see them swarm from dead men's eyes

And share the soldiers' bread!

Nor think I now forgot

The filth and stench of war,

The corpses on the parapet,

The maggots on the floor.

Isaac Rosenberg
The wheels lurched over the sprawled dead
But pained them not, thought their bones crunched,
Their shut mouths made no moan,
They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man, and born of woman,
And shells go crying over them
From night to night and now.

Earth has waited for them
All the time of their growth
Fretting for their decay:
Now she has them at last!

Originally Posted by Wllfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eye writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick with sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

As above, it wasn't a country or person that Tolkien was equating with Mordor; it was WAR! It was this ugliness, this waste of lives, the destruction of the world, the pitiful sacrifices on Mars' altar, the suffering of those just trying to find a quiet place (just think for a moment of all of the children!) - that I think was what Tolkien saw as the 'evil,' not some specific European country.

Reading the book with the stories and poems like those above, I couldn't help but be touched by the huge mess the whole affair was...and yet, for what? What did it accomplish again? Ask someone on the street to see if they even know about what had taken place.

All of it washed away by some big hose?

[Mithalwen]

I saw a documentary about the Coventry blitz a couple of weeks ago and although I grew up on stories about it (my father and both sets of grandparents lived through it) seeing news footage of it for the first time renewed the impact and made me wonder if the horror of the Blitz had influenced (inspired seems the wrong word) the liquid fire of Isengard and the assault of fire on Minas Tirith:

"A power and mind of malice guided it . As soon as the great catapults were set ...they began to throw missiles marvellously high, so that they passed right above the battlements and fell thudding within the first circle of the City; and many of them by some secret art burst into flame as they came toppling down".

[The Mouth of Sauron]

Considering that the average blond blue-eyed Rider of Rohan appeared to be modelled on equestrian Aryans and the men of Gondor kept referring to "lesser men", perhaps we shouldn't be too quick to accuse Sauron of Nazi sympathies.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by alatar

Out came the hose. Whatever it was with the ants, they - the living and the dead - were washed away, and now that we're into Fall, are long forgotten.

Reminds me of the passage in Appendix A on Arwen's fate at Cerin Amroth:

Originally Posted by JRRT

There at last when the mallorn leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed, and all the days of her life are uttterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more east of the Sea.

Here ends this tale, as it has come to us from the South; and with the passing of Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old.

Originally Posted by alatar

Reading the book with the stories and poems like those above, I couldn't help but be touched by the huge mess the whole affair was...and yet, for what? What did it accomplish again? Ask someone on the street to see if they even know about what had taken place.

All of it washed away by some big hose?

And this reminds me of Tolkien's contrast of--not modern war poetry but-- Beowulf with an imaginary (for the sake of discussion) theme from the life and death of St. Oswald.

Originally Posted by The Monsters and the Critics

It is just because the main foes in Beowulf are inhuman that the story is larger and more significant than this imaginary poem of a great king's fall. It glimpses the cosmic and moves with the thought of all men concerning the fate of human life and efforts; it stands amid but above the petty wars of princes, and surpasses the dates and limits of historical periods, however important. At the beginning, and during its process, and most of all at the end, we look down as if from a visionary height upon the house of man in the valley of the world. A light starts -- lixte se leoma ofer landa fela -- and there is a sound of music; but the outer darkness and its hostile offspring lie ever in wait for the torches to fail and the voice to cease. Grendel is maddened by the sound of harps.

It is quite possible that anyone who feels this with Tolkien would understand not to make comparisons with the Nazi regime. This is not to gainsay Mithalwen's point about the Blitz nor alatar's about War.

[Elessar]

the answer for me is no......why did he use a german name "frodo" to be the ring bearer....for in the first place their in war with germany....and why did sauron was defeated earlier???

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Elessar

the answer for me is no......why did he use a german name "frodo" to be the ring bearer....for in the first place their in war with germany....and why did sauron was defeated earlier???

It's my understanding Frodo was simply a modernised version of his 'real' Shire name, as Meriadoc was the modern rendering of Kalimac. I wasn't aware there was a connexion there with German. I don't understand what you mean with reference to Sauron.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Originally Posted by Elessar

Why did he use a German name "Frodo"?

I live in Germany, and I have never seen the name "Frodo" used other than in the book LotR. "Bodo", a first name that does exist here, is the closest thing that occurs to me.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

I live in Germany, and I have never seen the name "Frodo" used other than in the book LotR. "Bodo", a first name that does exist here, is the closest thing that occurs to me.

Further to Estelyn's point, "Frodo" and "Bilbo" are very similar to "Mungo", the common name of the saint who founded Glasgow.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

Originally Posted by alatar

Out came the hose. Whatever it was with the ants, they - the living and the dead - were washed away, and now that we're into Fall, are long forgotten.

This, and Bethberry's quote from the Appendices about Arwen's passing, remind me of a poem by Carl Sandburg:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

The atrocities of war -- and the tendency of people to forget them over time -- is nothing new. I never felt that Tolkien was thinking of any one specific war in his depictions of it -- although most certainly, his experiences in WWI were a huge influence on some aspects of it -- but rather, the horror that war has been from the first. I think that it is often a mistake to believe than any authorial voice reflects a single influence or opinion (unless of course the author has said it does), and like any person, Tolkien's views of war would have been formed by the many things -- his personal experiences, his studies, his religious beliefs, etc. -- that formed him. The Nazis are probably in there somewhere, but by influence, not intent, I believe.

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Ibrîniðilpathânezel

The Nazis are probably in there somewhere, but by influence, not intent, I believe.

The waste and destruction that took place during WWI was, to me, what Tolkien thought of as 'evil,' not a particular group. Like when he speaks through Sam who sees the Southroners marching, knowing that the one particular soldier wasn't evil, seemingly, but just caught up on the wrong side and maybe even forced to fight.

We see something 'evil' and compare it to something we know, as maybe Tolkien did. Anyway...

Both sides in the real war not only had to contend with 'the enemy,' but those enemies we all face - deprivation, starvation, disaster, atrocity, etc. Think of those that were lost, not via a bullet, but by the mud that drowned them, or the cold that froze them, or the virus, bacterium or amoeba that infected them. And then there were those clever inventions, such as gas, that not only killed, but tortured as it slowly did so.

There are monsters about, but where's Grendel in all of that?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by alatar

There are monsters about, but where's Grendel in all of that?

Are you mourning the absence of Grendel?

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Are you mourning the absence of Grendel?

Thought that she and her brother Hansel escapes the Witch's belly?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by alatar

Thought that she and her brother Hansel escapes the Witch's belly?

I think they might have been hosed?

[Sarumian]

I agree with the view that Tolkien didn't base his epos on any particular events from the World Wars. Neither could he ignore the reality of his own age. What he created, as I can see it, was a model showing how power works. And as soon as the model was correct we can find something alike in reality.

Well, if we are looking for resemblance, it often depends on our background. While reading about the seige of Minas Tirith I couldn't stop thinking about the Battle of Moscow in October-Desember 1941.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow

By early December, the lead German Panzer Groups stood less than 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the Kremlin, and Wehrmacht officers were able to see some of Moscow's buildings with binoculars; but the Axis forces were unable to make further advances. On December 5, 1941, fresh Soviet Siberian troops, prepared for winter warfare, attacked the German forces in front of Moscow; by January 1942, the Soviets had driven the Wehrmacht back 100 to 250 km (60 to 150 mi), ending the immediate threat to Moscow and marking the closest that Axis forces ever got to capturing the Soviet capital.

The Battle of Moscow was one of the most important battles of World War II, primarily because the Soviets were able to successfully prevent the most serious attempt to capture their capital. The battle was also one of the largest during the war, with more than a million total casualties. It marked a turning point as it was the first time since the Wehrmacht began its conquests in 1939 that it had been forced into a major retreat.

But there was no way Tolkien was going to depict this or any other event of WWII. Peculliary, in Sauron's cinicism and sarcasm I see more similarity to Stalin then to Hitler.

So I really don't think that the Third Reich was a prototype for Mordor, whatever NAZ-gul can make us think. They just shared some features of well-established tyranny.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

steeped in the history of Dark Age England

I take exception to the phrase, 'history' and "Dark Ages' being a contradiction in terms. The Dark Ages are "dark" precisely because there are no surviving histories of them.


If you mean the Middle Ages, please don't call them the Dark Ages. The span of the Dark Ages varies from author to author and place to place, but the usual convention runs from the sack of Rome and the Rescript of Honorius in 410 until the coronation of Charlemagne in 800.

[Bêthberry]

Perhaps it's time to note an interesting comment about Tolkien's method from one of his major critics, Tom Shippey. The comment is, I think, important, for it speaks to Tolkien's motivation not in his personal history or experience but in the subject so near to his heart, language.

Originally Posted by The Road to Middle-earth

It is not too much to say that this language and this people [Gothic and the Goths] haunted Tolkien all his life. As is noted by Christopher Tolkien (UT, p. 311), the names of the leaders of the Rohirrim before the dynasty of Eorl are not Old English, like everything else in the Riders' culture, but Gothic, e.g. Vidugavia, Vidumavi, Marhwini, etc. (see LOTR, PP. 1021-22). They function there to suggest language behind language and age behind age, a phenomenon philologists so often detected. On a larger scale, the Battle of the Pelennor Fields closely follows the account in Jordane's Gothic History, of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, in which also the civilisation of the West was preserved from the 'Easterlings', and in which the Gothic king Theodorid was trampled by his own victorious cavalry with much the same mixture of grief and glory as Tolkien's Theodon. (p. 15-16)

Shippey then provides a quotation from one of Tolkien's letters about this interest in words. The letter is written to Christopher Tolkien.

Originally Posted by Letters

All the same, I suddenly realised that I am a pure philologist. I like history, and am moved by it, but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names! Several people (and I agree) spoke to me of the art with which you made the beady-eyed Attila on his couch almost vividly present. Yet oddly, I find the thing that thrills my nerves is the one you mentioned casually: atta, attila. Without those syllables the whole great drama both of history and legend loses savour for me.

The point of atta, attila is that Attila's name comes from Gothic, not from the Hun's language and so one has to ponder how this ferocious barbarian came by the name "little father" in the language of a different tribe. There's a rewriting of history there, as philologists were wont to do.

So Shippey suggests:

Originally Posted by The Road to Middle-earth

. . . the word tells the story. Tolkien went on in his letter to say that in his mind that was exactly how The Lord of the Rings grew and worked. He had not constructed a design. Instead he had tried 'to create a situation in which a common greeting would be elen sila lumenn omentielmo. Literary critics might not believe him, but philologists (if any were left) ought to know better. (p. 16).

So there's a battle similarity from a very different age.

[Sarumian]

Thanks for taking this into the thread and making clear what sort of inspirations led Tolkien through his "quest".

However there is one other point I'd like to mention in connection with World War II. The great tyrants of the 20th c. were some sort of social sorcerers who bewitched nations and ruled with the combined use of lust, excitement and terror. This was how Evil's face looked in Tolkien's day.

All this is in correspondence with what I see as his central idea - that there is something like magic in the world; that we need to put up with this fact and be ready to face consequences.

[Juicy-Sweet]

Originally Posted by rorschach

Were the Danes 'evil'?

We aren't evil. It's just that our intentions at the time got misunderstood. We wanted to make friends, but it's sometimes difficult to communicate over cultural barriers.

Barring that Sauron is nothing like Hitler. Hitlers power was in INSPIRATION of people - he took over a non-evil people - Germany had not been especially evil in WWII - and turned them evil. Sauron does that a bit - but most of his followers are turned looong ago. Hitler would more be like a King of Rohan or Gondor that turned the whole country to the side of Sauron - which would have been an interesting episode. Hitler's armies followd him willingly: Sauron has to threaten many of them.

Hitler was a terrible military planner - the German generals refereed to him as "the madman in Nürnberg - while Sauron is more like Stalin, a master tactician and strategist. Hitler also sucked at the intelligence bit of the war, while this is maybe Sauron's strongest side.

The soldiers of Mordor and Nazi Germany are very different as well. Germany's were well disciplined, bordering to the robotic. Sauron's are undisciplined, often fighting among themselves. Sauron doesnt seem to have anything like the SS, a large completely loyal elite corps. He has a large unruly bunch and then some 20 large generals to keep them in check.

Hitler didnt fight for himself as a person - but for the aryan race. Sauron fights for himself alone.

Evil comes in many forms...