[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

We never got into WWII because we were encroached upon, and actually, we were never encroached upon before we entered.

The United States was dragged kicking and screaming into the Second World War: before the attack on Pearl Harbor American public opinion was against direct involvement, although Roosevelt was personally in favour. War was declared the day after the attack, suddenly with overwhelming popular support, and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States three days later, fulfilling treaty obligations to Japan. Anyone who tells you that U.S. involvement was an idealistic crusade against fascist tyranny is an idiot: in the East it was a direct response to an act of war, in the West the Axis powers initiated hostilities. Lindil is entirely correct in stating that Germany and Russia had signed a mutual non-aggression pact (the 'Pact of Steel'), which is not the same thing as an alliance. Hitler and Stalin hated one another, and National Socialism was vehemently opposed to Communism (fear of a Communist coup was the prime motivation for many of Hitler's wealthy financial backers). It was a joke of a treaty that was guaranteed to fail.

All of which doesn't have much to do with the issue, which is that Tolkien himself explicitly denied any analogies with the Second World War in the foreword to the second edition (included in all legal impressions since 1966). For the benefit of those who haven't got round to reading the foreword yet, here are a couple of quotations:

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then surely the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad Dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-earth.

An author cannot, of course, remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous. It is also false, though naturally attractive, when the lives of an author and critic have overlapped, to suppose that the movements of thought or the events of times common to both were necessarily the most powerful influences.

I could go on, but it doesn't seem a valuable use of my time. There are no parallels between the events in The Lord of the Rings and those of the Second World War: even the most cursory examination of Tolkien's foreword would have shown this, and explained why this thread is entirely pointless.