David Day

“Many critics have seen Tolkien's writings as a response to the trauma of the First World War, even going so far as to see The Lord of the Rings as a "war novel", rather than as pure high fantasy. Tolkien himself admitted there were connections with the First World War, but denied vehemently there were any to the second: Sauron is not Hitler; the One Ring is not the atomic bomb. There is a middle ground: The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, along with many other of his writings, was to large degree a therapeutic process in which he faced up to and attempted to purge the trauma inflicted on him and his peers at the Somme.... Who knows, then, what Tolkien might have made of the War of the Last Alliance had he written its tale in full? There are hints of the grandeur and terror it might have achieved: The Somme-like Battle of Dagorlad with the ill-considered charge of the Galadhrim and the swamp of dead bodies left behind in the Dead Marshes; the grueling seven-year siege and the climactic, gruesome duel on the slopes of Mount Doom. What we do have, however, is an intriguing, almost medieval-style chronicle of its main events and manoeuvres - more than enough, then, to feed our imaginations.”
― David Day, Illustrated World of Tolkien: The Second Age