I agree with Sharku's statement,
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I would be careful, and differentiate between the people in which the respective Dark Lords inspired fear.
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though not entirely with the way it was explained. They had different adversaries.
Morgoth did not have the same dominion that Sauron did. While Morgoth's strength was probably greater, in terms of the power of his forces, he was matched in a war against the people of Beleriand; and these people were led by the Noldor, who had sworn to utterly defy Morgoth. They hated him rather than feared him, and of course, in a full-scale war, you tend to get behind your own war effort and similarly
defy the foe - fight against it - rather than fear their power. Anyway, as I say, the Noldor hated Morgoth to the ends of the Earth. That was their main feeling towards him, not fear. The Noldorin allies were much the same, mostly.
This was probably the main feeling in Gondor and Rohan in the Third Age, too. They kept together and stood. But throughout the Second Age, most of Middle-Earth fell under Sauron's dominion and thus he was feared, the supreme power that governed the world then, by the poor fugitives who hid from him if they could - and feared by those who could not hide. Other Men were the same. But hatred, of a foe that you know and have known for a long time, overrules fear as the predominant feeling.
Think of wartime Britain, for an example of this. The Germans, the enemy, an enemy that was in fact a big threat as was Mordor to Gondor, weren't
feared so much as despised and defied. Had they actually been in occupation, they would have been held in actual fear a lot more.
[ October 05, 2003: Message edited by: Gwaihir the Windlord ]