Why did the Nazgul not succeed in Bree and on Weathertop?

[Sir Kohran]

The thing is that the Nazgul simply weren't particularly powerful. I mean, what power did they actually have? They carry swords, have nasty voices and that's pretty much it. Also they have a surprisingly high amount of weaknesses - fire, water and the very name of Elbereth. Heck, Aragorn by himself drove off five of them with a *torch*. He was able to make them flee without even drawing steel.

The Nazgul are somewhat like terrorists; the paranoia, uncertainty and overall psychological effect associated with them are in many ways more powerful than the actual beings themselves.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Well, let's not underestimate the value of fear as a weapon.

Tolkien understood this thoroughly, having survived the Somme. When he spoke of Gondor's men under the Nazguls' wings going fetal, 'thinking only of crawling and hiding, and of death,' I'm sure he had seen that very thing, and probably experienced a touch of it himself.

Napoleon described battle as 'two large groups of men trying to frighten each other.' And of course Boney knew exactly what he was talking about. A battle is not won by killing everyone on the other side (usually only a small percentage get killed)- but rather inflicting so much punishment on them that their morale- that complex of factors involving discipline, training, tactical position, loyalty, esprit-de-corps etc etc etc, gives way to the basic instinct for self-preservation. You win by making the other side give up.

The so-called 'Third Generation' of board wargames began to incorporate this understanding back in the 1970s; units had a 'morale factor' which could be raised or lowered by various things, and when reduced to a certain point retreat, rout or surrender ensued. Many, many times I would have *loved* to have a couple of 'morale-killer' units which did no physical harm, but simply hit every enemy within range with a -5 morale penalty.

And that's just what the Nazgul were.