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It's perhaps worth remembering that Tolkien set out to recreate the Atlantis-myth- the essential datum-point of which is the sinking of the island and the death of its inhabitants. For Tolkien to have ended it otherwise would have been to write a different story. As it is he's far more merciful than Plato, since he posits survivors; and goes to great length to assign a general guilt to the nation.
This last is perhaps a significant point. The ancient world-view, not only in the Old Testament but also in the classical world, was concerned with national gods and their placation; the fortunes of the people as a whole depended on the deity's pleasure or displeasure. When Jeremiah rants that the destruction of Israel was punishment for its sins, he's certainly not claiming that every Hebrew child was a sinner, but rather that the aggregate sins of the people had reached a tipping-point, so that YHWH had withdrawn his favor and protection. Before you call this 'primitive,' remember that sophisticated Athens executed Socrates for largely the same reason: he was held indirectly responsible for an act of sacrelige which was believed to threaten the safety of the state.
This sort of collectivism is I think inevitable in Tolkien's mythological mode, where peoples often stand in for characters. The Doom of Mandos destroyed a lot of Noldor (and Sindar and Men) who weren't even born at the time of the Kinslaying.
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