[CJFusco]

well, there has been a decades-long debate about whether or not LOTR is an unintentional (as Tolkien insists) allegory to WWII, and the ensuing Cold War. Since LOTR was published in the early 1950s, it would have been the very early Cold War. In loose terms, the images fit

THE ONE RING equals the Atomic Bomb

THE MEN, whose age is just beginning, represent America

THE ELVES, whose age is just ending, represent either the French or the English (some of the symbols get a little mixed up), with the other being represented by the DWARVES.

pick your enemy: SAURON and SAURUMAN represent either the Nazis and the Japanese or the Nazis and the Russians.

The Cold War allegory seems to fit a little better here: there is a seemingly constant aversion in Tolkien to Industry as opposed to nature; a common image of the USSR to the West during the Cold War was that Russia was the home of impersonal, cold wastelands filled with ugly, steaming factories

And on and on. As mentioned, Tolkien insists that allegory was not his intention, which I don't think matters because he was writing during a time in which his images of Evil and Good would have been definitely shaped by WWII and the Cold War. It only makes sense that how people see the world is shaped by the lens of their times.