The Second World War as allegory

Because The Lord of the Rings was written between 1937 and 1949, readers have taken it as an allegory of the Second World War: the Ring as the atomic bomb, Mordor as Germany or Russia, the Scouring of the Shire as post-war Britain. In the Foreword to the second edition Tolkien answered at length. He cordially disliked allegory in all its manifestations; the real war did not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion — had it done so, the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron. He distinguished applicability, which is the reader's freedom, from allegory, which is the author's domination. The war did leave its mark, but on the landscape and the tone, not the plot.