[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.